Lunday v. City of Albany
| Decision Date | 08 December 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 1145,D,1145 |
| Citation | 42 F.3d 131 |
| Parties | James F. LUNDAY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. The CITY OF ALBANY, Defendant-Appellant, Albany Police Officers Kenneth Sutton, John Tanchak, Thomas Schillinger and Thia Sidoti, Individually and as Agents, Servants, and/or Employees of the Albany Police Department, and various other Agents, Servants, and/or Employees of the Albany Police Department whose actual names are presently unknown, Defendants. ocket 93-9019. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
John L. Shea, Delmar, NY (LaFave & Associates, of counsel), for defendant-appellant.
Laurie Shanks, Albany, NY (Kindlon & Shanks, P.C., of counsel), for plaintiff-appellee.
Before: VAN GRAAFEILAND and JACOBS, Circuit Judges, and BEER, District Judge. *
The City of Albany appeals from an order entered by Magistrate Judge Ralph W. Smith, Jr., in the Northern District of New York, awarding plaintiff-appellee James F. Lunday attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988. The City claims that the lower court erred by failing to sustain the City's objections to certain items in the bills submitted by Lunday's counsel, and by refusing to reduce the lodestar amount of fees by some percentage to reflect that Lunday achieved only partial success at trial. We agree with the Magistrate Judge that Lunday's partial success at trial does not require a reduction in the lodestar amount of fees; but we remand for reconsideration of the City's specific fee objections because the memorandum decision and order expresses reluctance "to second guess experienced counsel" and to "demean counsel's stature" by a more detailed review--a deference that is not compatible with the court's fee-setting obligation.
The merits of Lunday's claim were tried to a jury, with Senior United States District Judge Lee P. Gagliardi presiding. Lunday contended that he was deprived of his right to be free of excessive force when he was arrested on May 13, 1989, and was held in police custody thereafter; that he was deprived of his liberty without due process of law; and that he was subjected to malicious prosecution. Lunday named as defendants the City and four of its police officers. Two of his claims invoked 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, et seq., and the six others were pleaded under state law.
The jury returned a verdict against defendant Sutton alone, and only on the excessive force claim (one of Lunday's Sec. 1983 claims). The jury awarded Lunday damages in the sum of $35,000, of which $20,000 was designated as compensatory and $15,000 as punitive. The jury exonerated the City and the other individual defendants. The judgment has been satisfied by the City.
Lunday applied for an award of attorneys fees pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988. Without objection, that application was referred by Judge Gagliardi to the Magistrate Judge. After receiving affidavits, memoranda and other supporting documents, and after hearing oral argument, Magistrate Judge Smith issued a Memorandum Decision and Order dated August 20, 1993 from which this appeal emanates. The court awarded attorney's fees in the amount of $115,425, together with $3,487.08 in expenses, for a total of $118,912.08. This award represents the full amount of Lunday's fee request, except that the fees requested for the preparation and argument of the fee application itself were found to be excessive and were reduced from $21,915 to $10,000.
On appeal, the City first contests the lower court's denial of its objections to certain items in Lunday's counsel's bills. Specifically, the City challenges the time spent in preparing particular documents (such as 11.5 hours preparing an amended complaint that substituted three names for John Does; and two days for preparing interrogatories to new defendants that differed from an earlier set only by the substitution of names); the reasonableness of time reported solely as legal research; the time spent in attorney strategy meetings; the time devoted to expert witnesses (none of whom testified), and time spent on several other matters deemed questionable by the City.
In Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), the Supreme Court instructed that, in reviewing fee applications under Section 1988, the district court should exclude hours that were not "reasonably expended." Id. at 434, 103 S.Ct. at 1939. Counsel for the prevailing party must exercise "billing judgment"; that is, he must act as he would under the ethical and market restraints that constrain a private sector attorney's behavior in billing his own clients. Id.; DiFilippo v. Morizio, 759 F.2d 231, 235 (2d Cir.1985). The task of ensuring that attorneys meet these standards primarily lies with the district court; we review a lower court's award of attorney's fees for an abuse of discretion. Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 571, 108 S.Ct. 2541, 2553, 101 L.Ed.2d 490 (1988); Ruggiero v. Krzeminski, 928 F.2d 558, 564 (2d Cir.1991).
The memorandum decision and order fixing the amount of attorney's fees due Lunday recites:
As to the number of hours expended by counsel, this court has carefully reviewed the submissions by plaintiff and finds no reason to reject any of those hours claimed for the period from counsel's first meeting with plaintiff[ ] through the trial and for research following the trial as to the potential for filing post-verdict motions. This court declines to second guess experienced counsel in deciding whether the hours devoted to research, drafting, interviewing, and consulting were necessary. To engage in such detailed hour by hour review is to demean counsel's stature as officers of the court and I have no intention of substituting my after-the-fact judgment for that of counsel who engaged in whatever research and other activities they felt necessary. Suffice it to say that the court after careful examination of counsel's meticulous and detailed time records is not to any degree shocked and finds the amount claimed to be a reasonable attorney's fee.
(...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Tanzini v. Marine Midland Bank, N.A.
...submitted by the parties leads it to conclude that only a few of these objections merit discussion. See, e.g., Lunday v. City of Albany, 42 F.3d 131, 134 (2d Cir.1994) (district court not required to "set forth item-by-item findings concerning what may be countless objections to individual ......
-
Funk v. F & K Supply, Inc.
...objections to the hours requested by plaintiffs' counsel, only some of these objections merit discussion. See, e.g., Lunday v. City of Albany, 42 F.3d 131, 134 (2d Cir.1994) (district court not required to "set forth item-by-item findings concerning what may be countless objections to indiv......
-
Jemine v. Dennis
...by counsel with a view to the value of the work product of the specific expenditures to the client's case. See Lunday v. City of Albany, 42 F.3d 131, 133 (2d Cir.1994); DiFilippo v. Morizio, 759 F.2d 231, 235 (2d Cir.1985). If any expenditure of time was unreasonable, courts should exclude ......
-
Stratakos v. Nassau Cnty.
...means of trimming fat from a fee application.’ ") (quoting Hensley , 461 U.S. at 434, 103 S.Ct. 1933 ); see also Lunday v. City of Albany , 42 F.3d 131, 134 (2d Cir. 1994) ("We do not require that the court set forth item-by-item findings concerning what may be countless objections to indiv......