Hoitt v. Vitek, 73-1351.
| Decision Date | 09 April 1974 |
| Docket Number | No. 73-1351.,73-1351. |
| Citation | 495 F.2d 219 |
| Parties | Carl B. HOITT, Jr., et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Joseph C. VITEK, etc., et al., Defendants, Appellees. Russell E. Collins et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
George Charles Bruno, Manchester, N. H., with whom Kurt Swenson was on brief, for appellants.
John J. Donahue, John M. Roney, Providence, R. I., Max D. Stern, Burnham, Stern & Shapiro, Boston, Mass., Jack Greenberg, and Stanley A. Bass, New York City, on brief, for Rhode Island Legal Services, Inc. and N. A. A. C. P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, amici curiae.
Dina Lassow and R. Patrick Maxwell, Washington, D. C., on brief for National Legal Aid and Defender Association, amicus curiae.
David W. Hess, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom Warren B. Rudman, Atty. Gen., was on brief, for appellees.
Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, ALDRICH and CAMPBELL, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal from the district court's denial of attorneys' fees to the plaintiff intervenors represented below by New Hampshire Legal Assistance (NHLA). The suit, Hoitt v. Vitek, 361 F.Supp. 1238 (D.N.H.1973), was brought by prisoners against the warden of New Hampshire State Prison to redress alleged deprivations of civil rights in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The crux of the prisoners' complaints rested in the prison authorities' failure to provide procedural safeguards prior to administrative action effecting changes in their in-prison rights and privileges and in some cases prior to involuntary transfer out-of-prison. The district court granted relief to the prisoners by: (1) permanently enjoining transfer of prisoners out-of-state unless procedural requirements were observed; (2) prohibiting discipline for events occurring during a prison-wide lockup; (3) awarding compensatory damages to nine plaintiffs for work they missed because of transfers; (4) awarding costs and reasonable attorneys fees to the plaintiffs. None of these orders was appealed. The challenge now before us is to a later order limiting the award of fees to the private counsel who shared responsibility for the case with New Hampshire Legal Assistance.
The district court in granting attorneys' fees exercised its equitable discretion and concluded that the public interest had been forwarded by the suit. This option was available to the district court under equity doctrines elucidated in among other recent cases, Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U.S. 400, 88 S.Ct. 964, 19 L.Ed.2d 1263 (1968) and Hall v. Cole, 412 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 1943, 36 L.Ed.2d 702 (1973). Though neither party appeals the award to private counsel, we note that the court was well within the bounds of its discretion in determining that the public, as well as all present and future prisoners, benefits when the constitutionality of the treatment of prisoners is assured, and that the bar ought to be encouraged to give them legal aid and advice in order to secure their rights.1
The district court, though taking this view, nonetheless denied fees to the NHLA attorneys. Both the private attorney and the NHLA attorneys below undertook the case without anticipation of reimbursement from their clients. Both pursued the case with dedication. The primary distinction between the two is a generic one. The private attorney earns his salary from private clients on a fee-paying basis. The private attorney may either be a salaried associate of a firm, a partner sharing its profits, or more directly dependent on the accumulated fees from his clients. The NHLA attorney is salaried through the federal Office of Economic Opportunity by an eighty per cent federally-funded project. Undertaking a non-fee paying case is his job and he cannot increase his income by an award of fees to the association.
Appropriate bases for fee awards include statutory authority for such grants, the desire to encourage settlement of cases, punishment of a losing party for misconduct or bad faith,...
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