Lewis v. Dist. of Columbia Gov't

• Decision Date: 03 December 2018
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 15-521 (JEB)
• Parties: PATRICIA D. LEWIS, Plaintiff, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA GOVERNMENT, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

PATRICIA D. LEWIS, Plaintiff,
v.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA GOVERNMENT, Defendant.

Civil Action No. 15-521 (JEB)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

December 3, 2018

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Plaintiff Patricia Diane Lewis had worked in human resources for the District of Columbia's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for decades before her employer first imposed suspicionless drug testing. Presented with a choice between acquiescing to this new requirement — to which she objected on privacy grounds — and being fired, Lewis chose door number two. When Defendant District of Columbia followed through on its threat to let her go, Plaintiff brought this suit. She alleged a bevy of constitutional and statutory violations against a host of defendants, under both D.C. and federal law, all of which relied on the same factual underpinning: the termination of her employment for refusing to submit to drug testing. Over the course of this litigation, Lewis's causes of action and the defendants against whom they were asserted were whittled down until a jury awarded Plaintiff over $800,000 on her Fourth Amendment claim against the District of Columbia Government. Lewis now seeks close to $1 million in attorney fees and expenses. The Court agrees that she is entitled to a sizeable fee award but takes issue with some of her calculations and requests. It will thus grant in part and

Page 2

deny in part Plaintiff's Motion and will award her a total $592,719.92 in fees and $53,846.72 in costs and expenses.

I. Background

Given the nature of this Motion, the case's procedural history plays the starring role in the following rehearsal of the facts, relegating the conduct that led to this lawsuit to second fiddle. The Court thus directs any readers interested in the background of this case to the Court's now-extensive repertoire of prior Opinions on the subject. See Lewis v. Gov't of the Dist. of Columbia, 315 F. Supp. 3d 571 (D.D.C. 2018); Lewis v. Gov't of the Dist. of Columbia, 282 F. Supp. 3d 169 (D.D.C. 2017); Lewis v. Gov't of the Dist. of Columbia, No. 15-521, 2015 WL 8577626 (D.D.C. Dec. 9, 2015); Lewis v. Gov't of the Dist. of Columbia, 161 F. Supp. 3d 15 (D.D.C. 2015).

A long-time government employee, Lewis served as a human-resources management liaison for OCME. See ECF No. 101 (Pl. Mot.) at 2. In 2012, the City moved the Office from its Massachusetts Avenue home to a new forensics building as part of an effort to consolidate a number of departments under one roof. See Lewis, 315 F. Supp. 3d at 574. This relocation spurred the D.C. Government — acting on an order from then-Mayor Vincent Gray — to institute mandatory criminal-background checks along with drug and alcohol testing as a condition of the employees' transfer to the new facility. Id. Lewis objected. She first raised her privacy concerns verbally at the meeting in which OCME informed its employees of the new policy. Id. at 574-75. Despite repeated requests from management, Plaintiff continued to refuse to sign a form acknowledging the new policy. Id. at 575. Some nine months later, citing among other things Lewis's refusal to sign, the District fired her. Id. This termination prompted Plaintiff to seek the services of an attorney. She met with Charles Bonner, a California attorney

Page 3

at the firm of Bonner & Bonner, who first attempted to negotiate her return to work. See Pl. Mot. at 1-3. When these efforts bore no fruit, Lewis filed suit.

Her operative Complaint asserted eleven separate causes of action against five named Defendants and fifty "Does," all stemming from her termination and the events preceding it. See ECF No. 7 (Am. Compl.). In addition to suing the District of Columbia itself, Lewis also named Vincent Gray, then the mayor; Charles T. Tucker, an attorney for the D.C. Government who first informed Lewis of the mandatory drug testing and purportedly threatened to fire anyone who did not comply; Beverly Fields, OCME's Chief of Staff; Paul Quander, D.C.'s Director of Public Safety; and fifty unnamed parties whom Lewis promised to later identify. Id. at 5. Against these Defendants, the Complaint alleged a barrage of claims. Lewis asserted violations of the U.S. Constitution (the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments), federal statutes (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act), a D.C. statute (the D.C. Human Rights Act), and D.C. common law (defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and wrongful termination). Id. at 13-28. Although styled as a cause of action, Plaintiff also tucked a request for declaratory and injunctive relief amongst the counts of her Complaint. Id. at 28. This vast array of both causes of action and Defendants previously led this Court to remark that Lewis's Complaint appeared as if counsel had "toss[ed] any conceivable claim into the cauldron and give[n] it a mighty stir." Lewis, 161 F. Supp. 3d at 23.

As the reader may have anticipated, not all these claims made it to trial. First, on December 7, 2015, the Court granted in part a Motion to Dismiss filed by a subset of the Defendants. See Lewis, 161 F. Supp. 3d at 37. This Opinion removed some Defendants altogether and limited the causes of action that could proceed against others. More specifically,

Page 4

the Court disposed of all causes of action against Gray and Fields, finding that any claim against them in their official capacity was redundant given Plaintiff's naming of the District. Id. at 36. The Court found that any individual-capacity claim, conversely, failed to allege sufficient personal involvement. Id. at 36-37.

The Court similarly held that a subset of the counts against the District failed to clear the Rule 12(b)(6) hurdle. All three common-law causes of action could not proceed because Plaintiff had forgone first seeking administrative redress pursuant to the District's Comprehensive Merit Personnel Act. Id. at 34-36. The same fate befell Plaintiff's procedural-due-process claim, but for a different reason: Lewis did not identify procedures she was owed but denied sufficient to raise her claim "above the speculative level." Id. at 31. Many of her statutory claims met the same end. The Court dismissed her Title VII discrimination count (which Lewis abandoned in her Opposition), Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act count, and D.C. Human Rights Act count. Id. at 31, 33-34. It also narrowed Lewis's ADA claim, only permitting it to go forward to the extent she alleged that the District had made an improper inquiry into her medical history. Id. at 31-33.

The two additional Defendants — Tucker and Quander — filed a separate Motion to Dismiss. Two days after ruling on the first Motion, the Court granted the second Motion as to Quander, thus removing him from the case, but denied it as to Tucker. See Lewis, 2015 WL 8577626, at *1. The three counts asserted against him thus proceeded.

For those keeping score, three counts against each of two Defendants survived these proceedings: violations of the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and ADA against the District, and claims under the Fourth Amendment as well as the torts of IIED and defamation against Tucker.

Page 5

Summary judgment took another bite out of Plaintiff's case. Lewis there voluntarily dismissed her defamation claim against Tucker and all causes of action against the still-unidentified Doe Defendants. See Lewis, 282 F. Supp. 3d at 177. The Court further narrowed the remaining scope of her Complaint. It held that summary judgment should be entered in favor of the District on the First Amendment claim and in favor of Tucker on IIED. Id. at 184, 190. Factual issues, however, prevented any ruling on the Fourth Amendment against both Defendants, which the Court characterized as "the heart of this suit." Id. at 184. It similarly found that factual questions most appropriate for a jury remained as to Plaintiff's ADA count asserted against the District. Id. at 188-89.

The enduring counts went to trial. Not all, however, made it to the jury. With one more turn in this saga, the Court granted Tucker's Rule 50 Motion following the close of Plaintiff's evidence, ending his role in this case. See 03/14/2018 Minute Entry. Lewis's remaining claims — now narrowed to two causes of action against one Defendant — were submitted to the jury, which found for her on the Fourth Amendment, but not on the ADA count. See Lewis, 315 F. Supp. 3d at 576. It awarded her a total of $802,800 in damages, composed of $499,800 in economic damages and $303,000 in non-economic damages. See Pl. Mot. at 1. And that is how, loyal readers, Lewis's case wound its way from an eleven-count Complaint against a host of Defendants to a victory on one claim against one Defendant.

But our train is not quite at the station. The District submitted extensive post-trial briefing, requesting that the Court reverse the jury's verdict and instead grant judgment in its favor. See ECF No. 84. The Court denied this Motion. See ECF No. 90. Then, a few months later, came this request for fees. Lewis's Motion seeks $876,670 in fees for the toil of her three

Page 6

attorneys and reimbursement of $85,244.41 for the expenses they incurred in this litigation. See Pl. Mot. at 23. (As recounted below, Lewis slightly revised these figures in her Reply.)

II. Analysis

As is often the case with such quarrels, the parties raise no shortage of disputes. The main field of battle deals with fees themselves — which requires an analysis of the applicable rate, the number of hours, any adjustment for partial success, and entitlement to fees on fees — after which the Court will also address the issue of costs and expenses.

A. Attorney Fees

Under the "American Rule," each party ordinarily bears its own attorney fees. See Alyeska Pipeline Serv. Co. v. Wilderness Soc'y, 421 U.S. 240, 245 (1975). This default rule, however, can be altered by express statutory...