Firestine v. Parkview Health System, Inc., 1:01-CV-0414.

• Citation: 374 F.Supp.2d 658
• Decision Date: 08 June 2005
• Docket Number: No. 1:01-CV-0414.,1:01-CV-0414.
• Parties: Cynthia FIRESTINE Plaintiff v. PARKVIEW HEALTH SYSTEM, INC. Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Indiana

Page 658

374 F.Supp.2d 658

Cynthia FIRESTINE Plaintiff v. PARKVIEW HEALTH SYSTEM, INC. Defendant.

No. 1:01-CV-0414.

United States District Court, N.D. Indiana, Fort Wayne Division.

June 8, 2005.

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Cynthia Rockwell, Haller & Colvin PC, Fort Wayne, IN, for Cynthia Firestine, Plaintiff.

John C Theisen, Theisen Bowers & Associates LLC, Monica S Senk, Theisen Bowers & Associates LLC, Fort Wayne, IN, for Parkview Health System Inc, Parkview Hospital Inc By agreement of counsel and by interlineation defendant name changed to reflect proper name, Defendants.

J Frank Kimbrough, J Frank Kimbrough & Associates, Fort Wayne, IN, Pro Se.

OPINION AND ORDER

WILLIAM C. LEE, District Judge.

Before the court is Plaintiff's Consolidated Final Request for Attorneys Fees and her Consolidated Final Request for Costs filed on May 5, 2005 in accordance with this court's Opinion and Order dated May 2, 2005. On May 11, 2005, Defendant filed its Final Objection to Plaintiff's Petition for Fees to which Plaintiff replied on May 16, 2005. For the following reasons, Plaintiff will be awarded $152,165.63 in attorneys fees and $3,297.27 in costs.

Background

Plaintiff brought the instant lawsuit alleging retaliation pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., after she voiced complaints concerning discrimination based on her religion. The undersigned granted summary judgment to the defendant but the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case for trial. Firestine v. Parkview, 388 F.3d 229 (7th Cir.2004). After a three day trial, a jury concluded that the Defendant engaged in unlawful retaliation and awarded the plaintiff $1,100.00 in compensatory damages and $40,315.00 in punitive damages. Thereafter, the undersigned authorized $21,300 in backpay and $2,420.00 in prejudgment interest. The court turns now to the issue of attorneys fees and costs.

Attorneys' Fees

Plaintiff requests attorney fees in excess of $170,000.00 for 913.40 hours of work expended. Prevailing parties are expressly authorized to recover "a reasonable attorney's fee (including expert fees) as part of the costs" under Title VII. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k). The district court has broad discretion to determine the reasonable fees and costs that should be awarded. Phetosomphone v. Allison Reed Group, Inc., 984 F.2d 4, 6 (1st Cir.1993) (stating that in determining reasonable attorney's fees, "the trial court's range of discretion is particularly broad."). Indeed, the trial court is in the best position to determine the reasonableness of a fee award, given its familiarity with the case and the attorneys' work product. Tenner v. Zurek, 168 F.3d 328, 330 (7th Cir.1999).

Parkview does not dispute that the above statutory language permits an award of fees; rather, Parkview contests the amount of the fees requested, arguing that the amount requested is unreasonable and excessive, and that many of the fees sought were unnecessary to prosecuting the case.

To determine reasonable attorneys' fees, the court first calculates the "lodestar" amount by multiplying the number of hours reasonably expended by the appropriate hourly rates for attorneys. See Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 433, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983). "[T]he district court should exclude excessive, redundant or otherwise unnecessary hours." Quaratino v. Tiffany & Co., 166 F.3d 422, 425 (2d Cir.1999) (citing Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433-35, 440, 103 S.Ct. 1933). While the lodestar can then be adjusted in light of factors such as the results obtained, Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434, 103 S.Ct. 1933, "there is ... a strong presumption that the lodestar figure represents a reasonable fee." Quaratino, 166 F.3d at 425 (citation and internal quotation omitted). Accordingly, the court turns first to a calculation of the lodestar.

I. Calculation of the Lodestar

a. Reasonable Hourly Rates

A "reasonable" hourly rate should reflect the "market rate" for the attorney's services, People Who Care v. Rockford Bd. of Educ., Sch. Dist. No. 205, 90 F.3d 1307, 1310 (7th Cir.1996); the market rate is "the rate that lawyers of similar ability and experience in the community normally charge their paying clients for the type of work in question." Spegon v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 175 F.3d 544, 555 (7th Cir.1999). "The burden of proving the `market rate' is on the fee applicant; however, once the attorney provides evidence establishing his market rate, the burden shifts to the defendant to demonstrate why a lower rate should be awarded." Id. at 554-55 (internal citations omitted).

The reasonable hourly rates proposed by Plaintiff for the attorneys working on her case vary depending upon experience from $175.00 per hour to $225.00 per hour. These rates reflect the fact that during the course of this long litigation, the Plaintiff's attorneys' rates have changed to reflect the particular attorney's degree of experience. Parkview has not taken issue with the hourly rates charged by Plaintiff's counsel or presented any rebuttal evidence suggesting that these amounts exceed the market rate. See Connolly, 177 F.3d at 597 (party opposing fee award demonstrated that hourly rates charged were unreasonable by submitting multiple affidavits of attorneys with similar experience stating that rates "greatly exceeded the rates those attorneys would ordinarily charge in similar cases."). Indeed, this court has reviewed the hourly rates charged by Plaintiff's counsel and find them to be reasonable based upon the prevailing market rates in the community for similar work by attorneys of similar experience.¹ Accordingly, the Court accepts these rates as reasonable hourly rates for the attorneys working on Plaintiff's case.

Plaintiff also seeks fees for services of legal assistants² working on her case based upon hourly rates ranging from $75.00 to $85.00 per hour. Again, Parkview does not take issue with the hourly rates charged for paralegal and legal assistant services. It does, however, contend that many of the charges are purely clerical or administrative tasks which should not be billed at a paralegal rate. See Id. at 288 ("Of course, purely clerical or secretarial tasks should not be billed at a paralegal rate, regardless of who performs them."). Indeed, as Parkview points out, "[a]ttorneys do staff their law firms with various `levels' of employees, and it is not unreasonable to require those attorneys to delegate work to the correct level, according to its complexity." People Who Care v. Rockford Bd. of Educ., School Dist. No., 205 90 F.3d 1307, 1315 (7th Cir.1996). In Parkview's estimation then, a number of tasks were not properly delegated to the appropriate staff person and thus, they are being excessively charged for administrative and secretarial tasks. The court shall scrutinize this issue in the next section but, for now, the court summarizes the reasonable hourly rates as follows:

                                              Position            Rates
                ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  Cynthia Rockwell (10)3      Lead Counsel        $195.00 through 11/1/2001
                                                                  $210.00 11/1/2001 — 1/1/2004
                                                                  $225.00 1/1/2004 — present
                ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                

                  Lori Jansen (17)            Co-Counsel          $175.00 through 1/1/2004
                                                                  $185.00 1/1/2004 — present
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  George Sistevaris           Counsel             $200.00
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  Sharon Farnbach (24)        Legal Assistant     $ 80.00 through 1/1/2004
                                                                  $ 85.00 1/1/2004 — 3/31/2004
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  Kathy Sasser (24)           Legal Assistant     $ 80.00 through 1/1/2004
                                                                  $ 85.00 1/1/2004 — present
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  April Horrigan (31)         Legal Assistant     $ 75.00
                

b. Reasonable Hours Expended

With respect to the number of hours expended on the case, hours that an attorney would not properly bill to his or her client in the private sector cannot properly be billed to the adverse party under a fee-shifting statute. Thus, plaintiff's counsel should exclude from his or her request excessive, redundant or otherwise unnecessary expenses; in the event counsel does not exercise such judgment, the district court may reduce the number of hours accordingly. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40.

Lead counsel on Plaintiff's case represents that she has exercised billing judgment and removed all hours that were excessive or redundant. Parkview, however, takes issue with numerous time entries, each of which will be categorized and discussed below.

1. Summary Judgment

Parkview objects to 78.4 hours⁴ of attorney time spent on responding to a motion for summary judgment and filing a motion to strike, claiming that to expend nearly two full weeks on these is excessive. By way of comparison, Parkview notes that its counsel drafted both a summary judgment motion and a reply brief but expended only 59.4 hours on both briefs. Certainly, in a typical case, something much less than 78 hours in attorney time is required to defend against a summary judgment motion. Baker v. John Morrell & Co., 263 F.Supp.2d 1161, 1197 (N.D.Iowa, 2003) ("In a run-of-the-mill case, the court agrees that 25 hours would probably be sufficient to prepare a resistance to a summary judgment motion."). The present case, while not an extraordinarily complex or novel claim, did have several key issues that required...