Felton v. BOARD OF COM'RS OF COUNTY OF GREENE

• Decision Date: 31 May 1994
• Docket Number: No. TH 89-263-C.,TH 89-263-C.
• Citation: 853 F. Supp. 1099
• Parties: William FELTON, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF the COUNTY OF GREENE and Robert Crowe, as Commissioner of Greene County, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Indiana

853 F. Supp. 1099

William FELTON, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF the COUNTY OF GREENE and Robert Crowe, as Commissioner of Greene County, Defendants.

No. TH 89-263-C.

United States District Court, S.D. Indiana, Terre Haute Division.

May 31, 1994.

Brenda Rodeheffer, Monday Rodeheffer & Jones, Kenneth E. Lauter, John H. Haskin & Associates, Indianapolis, IN, Mary Ann Habeeb, Albright & Habeeb, Indianapolis, IN, for William E. Felton.

James S. Stephenson, Stephenson Daly Morow & Kurnik, Indianapolis, IN, Marilyn A. Hartman, Hartman & Paddock, Bloomfield, IN, for Greene County Com'rs, Lee L. Stone, Robert Crowe.

ORDER ON MOTION TO DISBURSE MONEY

HUSSMANN, United States Magistrate Judge.

This matter is before the Court on the Motion for Disbursement of Monies filed by John H. Haskins & Associates (hereafter "Haskins")¹ on January 28, 1994. Haskins sought an order to disburse money deposited by the defendants into the Clerk of Court to satisfy an Amended Judgment Entry dated October 29, 1993 (hereafter "Amended Judgment Entry"). In the motion to disburse the monies, Haskins requests that this Court order the defendants to pay to plaintiff's counsel post-judgment interest on the amount of attorney's fees awarded in the Amended Judgment Entry. At the Court's request, Haskins filed a Memorandum of Law on March 29, 1994, in support of his position that this Court must order the defendants to pay additional money into the Court to satisfy the judgment. The defendants filed a Response Memorandum on April 21, 1994, which argues that the Amended Judgment Entry did not award post-judgment interest on the attorney fee award, and that in the absence of a motion to amend the judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59, no interest is payable.

In analyzing this problem, it should be noted that in this Circuit, interest on unliquidated claims, such as attorney fee awards, commences to run on the date of the entry of judgment—which here is October 29, 1993.²Fleming v. County of Kane, 898 F.2d 553, 563 (7th Cir.1990). Interest ceases to accrue on the date that the judgment is paid. Fleming, supra at 563. In this case, that date is March 2, 1994. The legal standard being what it is, the Court however notes that a certain period of time is necessary from the time a judgment entry is received by an official of a municipal entity defendant for that official to seek final review of the legality of the judgment, decide on whether any further appeal of the judgment is warranted, and process the judgment for payment through the appropriate fiscal authority. In this Court's opinion, that process may frequently take as much as 30 days, though seldom more than 60 days.

The key issue here is whether it is mandatory for this Court to award interest on attorney's fees. We conclude that it is, based upon the language in Bell, Boyd & Lloyd v. Tapy, 896 F.2d 1101 (7th Cir.1990), which provides that 28 U.S.C. § 1961(a) "entitles the prevailing plaintiff in a federal suit . . . to postjudgment interest at a rate fixed in the statute, whether or not there is an award of interest in the judgment, . . . or even a request for interest in the complaint." Bell at 1104. Unless an award of attorney's fees is somehow not a judgment, then the fact that the Court's judgment entry failed to contain provisions for that interest, or the fact that the plaintiff has not sought to amend the judgment entry, is of no effect.

The defendants argue that since the District Court has the discretion to determine what an appropriate fee is, it also has the discretion to decide whether to award interest on that fee. While we recognize that the District Court has discretion to determine what an appropriate fee should be, we think that the discretion is largely limited to determining what an appropriate number of hours should have been spent on the case and the appropriate hourly rate that should be applied to those hours. While some case law such as Fleming indicates that the Court also has discretion to "compensate for delay in the receipt of the fee by a computation of interest or a percentage allowance for inflation", Fleming at 564, this discretion is limited to determining pre-judgment interest for the time period between the time that the legal services were performed until the time that the judgment entry changed the nature of ...