Goodwin v. Metts, s. 91-2518

• Decision Date: 28 August 1992
• Docket Number: 91-2523,Nos. 91-2518,s. 91-2518
• Citation: 973 F.2d 378
• Parties: James Kenneth GOODWIN; Eddie Earl Hallman, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. James R. METTS, individually and in his official capacity as Sheriff of Lexington County, South Carolina; Vernon O. Maxwell, individually and in his official capacity as a Lexington County Deputy Sheriff, Defendants-Appellees, and Ralph Bishop, individually and d/b/a Bishop Salvage Company, Defendant. James Kenneth GOODWIN; Eddie Earl Hallman, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. James R. METTS, individually and in his official capacity as Sheriff of Lexington County, South Carolina; Vernon O. Maxwell, individually and in his official capacity as a Lexington County Deputy Sheriff, Defendants-Appellants, and Ralph Bishop, individually and d/b/a Bishop Salvage Company, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 378

973 F.2d 378

James Kenneth GOODWIN; Eddie Earl Hallman, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. James R. METTS, individually and in his official capacity as

Sheriff of Lexington County, South Carolina; Vernon O.

Maxwell, individually and in his official capacity as a

Lexington County Deputy Sheriff, Defendants-Appellees,

and

Ralph Bishop, individually and d/b/a Bishop Salvage Company,

Defendant.

James Kenneth GOODWIN; Eddie Earl Hallman, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. James R. METTS, individually and in his official capacity as

Sheriff of Lexington County, South Carolina; Vernon O.

Maxwell, individually and in his official capacity as a

Lexington County Deputy Sheriff, Defendants-Appellants,

and

Ralph Bishop, individually and d/b/a Bishop Salvage Company,

Defendant.

Nos. 91-2518, 91-2523.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued March 4, 1992.

Decided Aug. 28, 1992.

Armand Georges Derfner, Charleston, S.C., argued (Lex Rogerson, Lexington, S.C., Herbert W. Louthian, Louthian & Louthian, Columbia, S.C., John D. Delgado, Columbia, S.C., on brief), for appellants.

David Beam Summer, Jr., Nexsen, Pruet, Jacobs & Pollard, Columbia, S.C., argued (Harold W. Jacobs, on brief), for appellees.

Before RUSSELL, Circuit Judge, and BUTZNER and CHAPMAN, Senior Circuit Judges.

OPINION

DONALD RUSSELL, Circuit Judge:

James Kenneth Goodwin and Eddie Earl Hallman appeal the district court order disallowing approximately fifty-percent (50%) of the fees claimed for Goodwin's and Hallman's attorneys pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988 (1988). Appellee Vernon O. Maxwell cross-appeals, arguing that the district court erred in refusing to limit its award of attorneys' fees to a percentage of the damages recovered, as specified in Appellants' compensation agreement with their attorneys. As explained herein, we affirm the district court order.

I.

In the underlying district court action, Appellants Goodwin and Hallman alleged, inter alia, that they were improperly prosecuted for a break-in which occurred in May of 1983 at the residence of their employer, Ralph Bishop, in Lexington County, South Carolina. Goodwin and Hallman obtained a verdict against Lexington County Deputy Sheriff Vernon O. Maxwell for malicious prosecution in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1988) ¹ and for malicious prosecution in violation of South Carolina law, and against Sheriff James R. Metts for malicious prosecution in violation of South Carolina state law. The jury awarded $150,000 in total compensatory damages against Maxwell and Metts, and $175,000 in punitive damages against Maxwell alone. The district court action also involved numerous unsuccessful federal and state claims against Bishop, Maxwell and Metts, and against Maxwell's partner, Deputy Sheriff John T. Vaughn.

On appeal of the underlying action, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's award of compensatory damages, but reversed the award of punitive damages. Goodwin v. Metts, 885 F.2d 157, 165-69 (4th Cir.1989), cert. denied sub nom. Maxwell v. Goodwin, 494 U.S. 1081, 110 S.Ct. 1812, 108 L.Ed.2d 942 (1990). Defendant Maxwell petitioned the Fourth Circuit for a rehearing, which this court denied on November 28, 1989, before unsuccessfully petitioning the Supreme Court for certiorari.

In subsequent proceedings before the district court, Goodwin and Hallman moved pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988 (1988) ² for $432,070 in attorneys' fees and expenses, including compensation for 1,685.7 attorney hours, in connection with the action, judgment and appeal under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1988). After an evidentiary hearing on the motion, the district court entered an order on July 31, 1990 awarding Goodwin and Hallman attorneys' fees in the amount of $140,245.00, expenses in the amount of $12,308.57, and costs in the amount of $4,128.10. (J.A. at 322-23.) The district court thereby disallowed approximately fifty-percent (50%) of the total hours which Goodwin and Hallman claim their attorneys expended on the underlying district court action and through appeal of the judgment therein. The attorneys' fees award of $139,200 represented a total of 1,160 hours--840 attorney hours for the action in district court and 320 attorney hours for post-trial proceedings--at a uniform rate of $120 per hour.

Goodwin and Hallman appeal the district court's disallowance of the claimed attorneys' fees at both the trial level and appellate level. Appellee Maxwell cross-appeals, arguing that the district court erred in refusing to limit the attorneys' fees award to forty-percent (40%) of Appellants' recovery in the district court, per the attorneys' contingent-fee agreement with Goodwin and Hallman. We find no error in the district court order.

II.

We first address Appellants' contention that the district court erred in disallowing approximately fifty-percent (50%) of the attorneys' hours which Goodwin and Hallman claim were expended at the district court level in the underlying action. The district court offered two reasons for allowing compensation on only 840 of the 1,685 hours claimed for attorney's work at the trial level: Goodwin's and Hallman's failure to prevail on most of the claims which they presented in the district court, and duplication of their attorneys' efforts at the district court level. The court stated,

First ... [a]lthough the plaintiffs sought to recover against all four defendants and claimed their constitutional rights were violated from the time of their arrest in April 1983 until their criminal trial in January 1984, the jury found only one defendant, Maxwell, liable under section 1983 and only for his actions in the month preceding trial, from December 1983 to January 1984. In addition, on appeal plaintiffs' recovery was limited to actual damages. Thus, a substantial number of the hours spent on factual discovery and legal research, as well as at trial, was devoted to matters on which the plaintiffs did not prevail, namely, the arrest and early prosecution of the plaintiffs, defendant Metts'[ ] policies and involvement in the prosecution and, to a lesser extent, punitive damages and the liability of defendants Bishop and Vaughn....

Second, the Court concludes that number of hours claimed should be further reduced because the association of additional lawyers during the action's pendency inevitably resulted in duplication of effort.... When first associated, the new lawyers were required to spend some time becoming familiar with the somewhat complicated facts and law involved. In addition, duplication also resulted from the use of three to four lawyers throughout the action when one or two reasonably competent lawyers would have sufficed.

For the preceding reasons, the Court reduces the time claimed at the trial level to 840 hours....

J.A. at 316-18.

Appellants Goodwin and Hallman insist that the district court's reasons for disallowing of hours spent in the district court are flawed. As to the district court's determination that Goodwin and Hallman failed to prevail on a number of their claims, Appellants argue that the district court erred in treating their unsuccessful claims as "unrelated" to their successful claims for the purposes of 42 U.S.C. § 1988. As for the district court's determination that Goodwin's and Hallman's attorneys duplicated efforts in the district court action, the Appellants argue that, even if such duplication occurred, it constituted insufficient grounds for a disallowance of the proportions here.

In a situation "where the plaintiff is deemed 'prevailing' even though he succeeded on only some of his claims for relief," the Supreme Court has stated, "[T]wo questions must be addressed. First, did the plaintiff fail to prevail on claims that were unrelated to the claims on which he succeeded? Second, did the plaintiff achieve a level of success that makes the hours reasonably expended a satisfactory basis for making a fee award?" Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 434, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1940, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983).

The Court in Hensley elaborated upon this two-question inquiry as follows:

[C]ongressional intent ... requires that ... unrelated claims be treated as if they had been raised in separate lawsuits, and therefore no fee may be awarded for services on the unsuccessful claim.

It may well be that cases involving such unrelated claims are unlikely to arise with great frequency. Many civil rights cases will present only a single claim. In other cases the plaintiff's claims for relief will involve a common core of facts or will be based on related legal theories. Much of counsel's time will be devoted generally to the litigation as a whole, making it difficult to divide the hours expended on a claim-by-claim basis. Such a lawsuit cannot be viewed as a series of discrete claims. Instead, the district court should focus on the significance of the overall relief obtained by the plaintiff in relation to the hours reasonably expended on the litigation.

461 U.S. at 435, 103 S.Ct. at 1940. In light of the standards set forth in Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), we address Appellants' arguments that the district court erred in disallowing approximately fifty percent (50%) of the hours that Appellants claimed were expended for their civil rights action in the district court.

A.

The Fourth Circuit previously interpreted the Supreme Court's reference to "unrelated claims" in Hensley, 461 U.S. at 435, 103 S.Ct. at 1940, in an attorneys' fees matter similar to that presented here. In Abshire v. Walls, 830 F.2d 1277, 1282-83 (4th Cir.1987), plaintiff Abshire sued officers of the Baltimore County Police Department, alleging false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, an unconstitutional strip search in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and a conspiracy to deprive the plaintiff of his civil rights in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1985 (1988). Abshire named six officers and the Police Chief among the defendants. Id. at 1279. The...