Harris v. Maricopa County Superior Court

• Citation: 631 F.3d 963
• Decision Date: 20 January 2011
• Docket Number: No. 09–15833.,09–15833.
• Parties: Vernon HARRIS, Plaintiff–Appellant,v.MARICOPA COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT; Arizona Supreme Court; State of Arizona, Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

631 F.3d 963

111 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 503

11 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 822

2011 Daily Journal D.A.R. 1092

Vernon HARRIS, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.MARICOPA COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT; Arizona Supreme Court; State of Arizona, Defendants–Appellees.

No. 09–15833.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted March 10, 2010.Filed Jan. 20, 2011.

Cheri L. McCracken, Phoenix, AZ, for the plaintiff-appellant.Katherine Baker and Diane Bornscheuer, Scottsdale, AZ, for the defendants-appellees.Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Stephen M. McNamee, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. 2:02–cv–00494–SMM.Before: PROCTER HUG, JR., STEPHEN REINHARDT and JAY S. BYBEE, Circuit Judges.Opinion by Judge REINHARDT; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge BYBEE.

OPINION

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge:

After he was forced out of his position as an Initial Appearance Hearing Officer for the Maricopa County Superior Court, Vernon Harris unsuccessfully sued the Superior Court and the other defendants for violations of, inter alia, his rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. Defendants then sought substantial attorneys fees and costs from Harris, and were awarded over $125,000 in fees and costs by the district court. Harris challenges those awards. Our laws encourage individuals to seek relief for violations of their civil rights, and allow a defendant to recover fees and costs from a plaintiff in a civil rights case only “in exceptional circumstances” in which the plaintiff's claims are “frivolous, unreasonable or without foundation.” See Barry v. Fowler, 902 F.2d 770, 773 (9th Cir.1990) (internal quotation marks, citation omitted); Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U.S. 412, 422, 98 S.Ct. 694, 54 L.Ed.2d 648 (1978). Moreover, only fees “attributable exclusively to plaintiff's frivolous claims,” are recoverable by a defendant. See Tutor–Saliba Corp. v. City of Hailey, 452 F.3d 1055, 1064 (9th Cir.2006) (internal quotation marks, alterations and citation omitted). Because the district court both used an impermissible method of determining the amount of fees and costs to be assessed for the claims for which fees were appropriate, and erred in some of its determinations as to which claims were properly subject to a fee award to defendants, we vacate the award of attorneys fees and remand for a new award that complies with this opinion.

I

In February of 2000, Vernon Harris was appointed as an Initial Appearance Hearing Officer for the Maricopa County Superior Court. No employment contract was executed between Harris and the Superior Court, and by statute such Hearing Officers, also known as Commissioners, serve at the pleasure of the chief presiding judge of the court. See Ariz.Rev.Stat. § 12–213. In late 2000 or early 2001, allegations were made that Harris had engaged in inappropriate conduct towards female staff members, had asked his secretary to perform personal errands for him, and had performed his own duties inadequately. In January and February of 2001, Harris was placed on administrative leave, investigated, and, finally, given the option of resigning or being terminated. He chose to resign.

Harris, who is African American, then filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in which he alleged that he had been discriminated against on account of his sex and his race, which the EEOC dismissed. In February of 2002, Harris filed a complaint in Maricopa County Superior Court, naming as defendants the State of Arizona, Maricopa County Superior Court, Maricopa County, and the Arizona Supreme Court. Defendants removed the case to federal court, at which point Harris filed an Amended Complaint in which he made the following ten claims against the defendants: (1) breach of contract; (2) breach of duty of good faith and fair dealing; (3) hostile and discriminatory work environment; (4) race discrimination; (5) false light/invasion of privacy; (6) wrongful termination in violation of public policy; (7) intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress; (8) defamation; (9) violation of due process and equal protection under the law; and (10) intentional interference with a business relationship.

The parties then engaged in several years of discovery and legal maneuvering. Of note, in January 2003, Maricopa County was dismissed from the lawsuit on Harris's motion, and in October 2005, defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings was granted with respect to Harris's wrongful termination claim. In July 2006, after both Harris and the defendants filed summary judgment motions, the district court granted defendants summary judgment on the remaining claims in a sealed order. Harris appealed to this court and we affirmed in a memorandum disposition. Harris v.Super. Ct. of Ariz., 278 Fed.Appx. 719, 720–22 (9th Cir.2008). We denied defendants' motion for attorneys fees incurred in connection with the appeal without comment or explanation.

Prior to our disposition of the appeal, defendants moved for attorneys fees in district court. The district court denied the motion without prejudice. After we denied Harris's petition for rehearing of his appeal, defendants again moved in district court for attorneys fees, seeking $315,974.65 in fees under Arizona Revised Statutes §§ 12–341.01(A) and 41–1481(J) and 42 U.S.C. §§ 1988 and 2000e–5(k), non-taxable expenses of $53,533.66, and reasonable fees and costs for preparation of the fee petition.

In 2009, the district court granted in part and denied in part the fee motion, awarding defendants $85,514.84 in fees and $40,150.23 in non-taxable costs. It separated defendants' claims into those it designated contracts-based, for which fees are available to prevailing defendants under Arizona Revised Statute § 12–341.01(A) so long as certain conditions apply; those it designated as federal civil rights claims, for which fees are available to prevailing defendants in very limited circumstances under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1988 and 2000e–5(k); and those it designated as state law claims sharing a common nucleus of operative facts with the federal civil rights claims. It determined that most of Harris's basic civil rights claims, including his claims of disparate treatment, retaliation, and equal protection, were not frivolous, and thus that no attorneys fees were permissible for those claims. Similarly, it determined that his defamation and tortious interference claims were not frivolous, and awarded no fees on those claims. For Harris's other claims it found fees to be appropriate.

Although the defendants were able to specifically attribute work amounting to only about $10,000 of attorneys fees to the claims for which the district court determined fees to be warranted, the district court calculated the amount attributable to these claims to be $171,104.84 by taking the $251,464.10 in “general fees”—fees that the defendants requested but that they were not able to allocate to any particular claim—and dividing them equally across the ten claims in Harris's Amended Complaint, and then allocating to each claim for which it determined fees to be appropriate one-tenth of the total general fees. After calculating the amount of fees in this manner, the district court reduced the award by approximately half, to $85,514.84, in light of Harris's financial hardship. With respect to expenses, the district court awarded a prorated amount of defendants' requested expenses based on the ratio of contract-based claims (for which expenses are not available) to non-contract-based claims (for which, in the district court's view, expenses were available). There was no reduction to the amount of expenses for financial hardship, however. Harris timely appealed.

II

The principal issues in this case are legal in nature and therefore reviewed de novo. See Tutor–Saliba Corp. v. City of Hailey, 452 F.3d 1055, 1059–60 (9th Cir.2006); see also Ramsey Air Meds, L.L.C. v. Cutter Aviation, Inc., 198 Ariz. 10, 13, 6 P.3d 315 (2000). Harris's primary challenge is to the methodology that the district court used to determine the amount of fees attributable to those claims for which fees were appropriate. The remaining challenges involve which claims may appropriately be the subject of fee awards.

Defendants requested attorneys fees of $315,974.65. Some of this amount was allocated to specific claims, but it was not possible for the defendants to so allocate the vast majority of the fees. Accordingly, $251,464.10 of the fee amount requested by defendants was not associated with any specific claim, but instead was assigned to a category of “general fees.” The district court divided these general fees equally across the ten claims in Harris's Amended Complaint, and then for each claim for which it determined that fees were appropriate, added the one-tenth of the general fees apportioned to that claim to the much smaller amount of fees the defendants asserted were specifically attributable to the defense of that claim. For instance, for the wrongful termination claim, which the district court determined was frivolous simply by examining the Amended Complaint, and on which the district court granted defendants judgment on the pleadings in March of 2005, 15 months before it reached its decision as to the other claims, the district court calculated the amount of fees to be $25,207.36: $25,146.41 from general fees and $60.95 from work that defendants asserted was specifically attributable to defending against that claim.

In a civil rights case, such as this one, the pro-rata allocation of general fees between claims for which a fee award is appropriate and claims for which such an award is not appropriate, based solely on the number of claims, is impermissible, for reasons that go to the heart of our civil rights policy. Congress and the courts have long recognized that creating broad compliance with our civil rights laws, a...