Miller v. Mgmt. & Training Corp.

• Decision Date: 27 September 2021
• Docket Number: Civil Action 3:14-cv-427-HTW-LRA
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Mississippi
• Parties: JAMES RUSSELL MILLER PLAINTIFF v. MANAGEMENT & TRAINING CORPORATION DEFENDANT

JAMES RUSSELL MILLER PLAINTIFF
v.
MANAGEMENT & TRAINING CORPORATION DEFENDANT

Civil Action No. 3:14-cv-427-HTW-LRA

United States District Court, S.D. Mississippi, Northern Division

September 27, 2021

ORDER ON ATTORNEYS' FEE APPLICATION

HENRY T. WINGATE UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Before this Court is an Application for Attorney's Fees [doc. no. 205], filed on May 7, 2018, by the Defendant Management & Training Corporation (hereafter “MTC”). The application is opposed by the Plaintiff, James Russell Miller, in general, and as to specific items.

I. Introduction

Plaintiff brought this employment discrimination lawsuit against MTC on May 28, 2014, under the auspices of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq.), ^[1] 42

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U.S.C. § 1981, ^[2] alleging deprivation of rights; and 42 U.S.C. §1985, ^[3] alleging conspiracy to deprive plaintiff of his civil rights. Plaintiff also urged a supplemental claim under Mississippi state law for wrongful discharge and retaliatory discharge.

After several years of contentious and mostly unnecessary litigation, this court granted summary judgment to Defendant MTC, against all of Plaintiff's claims. Because of the frivolous nature of the lawsuit and the unreasonable and vexatious multiplication of the proceedings by Plaintiff's attorneys, this court also granted Defendant MTC's Motion for Attorneys' Fees. MTC subsequently submitted its Application for Attorneys' Fees which included an itemization of the fees it contended were appropriate, together with a supporting memorandum. Plaintiff Miller thereafter submitted his Objections to the Fee Application, and Defendant filed its Reply. It is now the task of this Court to examine all of the submissions in light of the relevant law, and determine the proper amount of attorneys' fees to be granted to the Defendant.

II. Factual and Procedural Background

Plaintiff herein, James Russell Miller, an African American male, is a former employee of MTC. MTC is a private, for-profit corporation, that operated a Correctional Facility located in Walnut Grove, Mississippi. Plaintiff had worked his way up from a position as a correctional officer with MTC's predecessor company, to Chief of Security for MTC at the Walnut Grove facility.

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None of this would be of any consequence to this court had matters proceeded routinely along at the Walnut Grove facility for Miller and his employer; but, of course, they did not. MTC terminated Miller on June 7, 2013, after MTC had determined that Miller had engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with a subordinate female employee. Although Miller denied the accusation, the female employee admitted to the inappropriate conduct. [doc. no. 136 at p.2]. Miller still protested his innocence, challenging the veracity of the subordinate female employee, as well as MTC's motive for crediting her word over his. MTC replaced Miller as Chief of Security with a white male.

Aggrieved by his termination, Miller filed with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”), ^[4] a charge of discrimination, which is a pre-requisite to filing a lawsuit under Title VII. Miller contended that he had been the victim of discrimination based on his sex, male. He made no mention in his EEOC charge of discrimination based on his race. Without providing a substantive ruling on Miller's charge, the EEOC provided Miller a “right to sue letter”^[5] which informed him of his right to file suit in federal court within ninety (90) days. Miller did just that, filing the Complaint commencing this lawsuit on May 28, 2014.

In his lawsuit, Miller contended that the accusation of inappropriate sexual conduct had

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not been the true reason for his termination. The true reasons, said Miller, were: 1) his constant complaints about staffing decisions violative of the consent decree in DePriest v. Walnut Grove Corr Authority, No. 3:10-CV-00663 CWR-FKB 2015 WL 3795020 (S.D.Miss. Mar. 26, 2012), “illegal acts”; and 2) racial and gender discrimination perpetrated by MTC against him.

In that initial Complaint, Miller waged a plethora of legal claims against MTC and several of its employees. All of the Defendants filed a Motion to Dismiss in which they cited authority to show that many of the claims were not legally valid on their face. These claims were: 1) the Title VII race claim against all defendants; 2) the Title VII race, sex, and retaliation claims against the individual defendants; 3) the § 1981 claim against the individual defendants; 4) the § 1985 conspiracy claim against all defendants; and 5) the retaliatory discharge claim against the individual defendants based on McArn v. Allied Bruce-Terminix Co., 626 So.2d 603, 876 (Miss. 1993).^[6] [doc. no. 8 p.5]. Apparently conceding the invalidity of some of these claims, Miller did not respond to the motion to dismiss these claims, choosing instead to file an Amended Complaint which omitted many of the superfluous claims he had initially filed.

Miller's First Amended Complaint ^[7][doc. no. 11] again targeted MTC and alleged the following causes of action: 1) racial discrimination and deprivation of constitutional rights under

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42 U.S.C. §1981; 2) race and gender discrimination and retaliation under Title VII; and 3) wrongful termination and retaliation under the laws of the State of Mississippi, pursuant to McArn v. Allied Bruce-Terminix Co., 626 So.2d 603, 876 (Miss. 1993). As to the latter, Miller contended, in his pleadings, that he had made frequent complaints to MTC officials that the facility was in violation of certain staffing policies of the institution, as well as the laws of the State of Mississippi.^[8] This, according to Miller, together with the alleged discrimination based on race and gender, resulted in his firing, and constitutes a wrongful discharge under the laws of the State of Mississippi based on McArn. Plaintiff's First Amended Complaint [doc. no. 11 at ¶6].

In addition to naming MTC in his Amended Complaint, Miller named as defendants Lawrence Mack (hereafter “Mack”), who was the Warden of the facility, and two female Deputy Wardens, Patricia Doty (hereafter “Doty”) and Priscilla Daly (hereafter “Daly”). Miller accused Mack, Doty and Daly of conspiring to have him fired, which, he contended, constituted a conspiracy to deprive him of his civil rights under Title 42 U.S.C. § 1985.

MTC filed its Answer to the Amended Complaint on September 23, 2014 [doc. no. 11]. The Answer asserted several affirmative defenses that should have placed Plaintiff on notice, once again, that any causes of action brought under Title VII necessitated the exhaustion of administrative remedies through the EEOC. MTC claimed that Plaintiff had not properly exhausted administrative remedies as required by Title VII, and thus his claims should be barred.

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Further, pled the defendants, Plaintiff's claims brought pursuant to Title VII were limited by the scope of Plaintiff's EEOC charge of discrimination.

The proceedings that transpired over the next few years consisted of, inter alia, contentious motions and hearings, manipulated continuances, and needless discovery battles. The litigation was marred by gamesmanship and frivolous filings by Plaintiff's attorneys and caustic language.^[9] The substance (or lack thereof) of these proceedings will be discussed later in this opinion.

On June 24, 2016, Defendant MTC filed its Motion for Summary Judgment as to all remaining claims.^[10] [doc. no. 135]. At the time this court was considering MTC's Motion for Summary Judgment, Plaintiff's claims against MTC had been narrowed to the following: gender discrimination in violation of Title VII (42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.);^[11] race discrimination in

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violation of 42 U.S.C. §1981, ^[12] and wrongful termination under the laws of the State of Mississippi, based on McArn v. Allied Bruce-Terminix Co., 626 So.2d 603, 876 (Miss. 1993).

The individual defendants (Mack, Doty and Daly) also filed their separate combined Motion for Summary Judgment on June 24, 2016 [doc. no. 137]. Plaintiff did not oppose their Motion, stating in his Response brief the following. “The Individual Defendants have moved for summary judgment on Miller's 42 U.S.C. § 1985 claim. Based on discovery developed thus far in the litigation, Plaintiff does not oppose this Motion.” [doc. no. 143 at ¶4].

Plaintiff apparently recognized that he had insufficient evidence, based on discovery, to hold these defendants in this lawsuit. In this court's view, Miller's claims against these individual defendants were so lacking in substance that Plaintiff's counsel would have been hard pressed to even manufacture an argument against summary judgment. It is to Plaintiff's and his lawyers' credit that they did not further pursue these claims, but to their discredit that they pressed these matters so needlessly and so vigorously for as long as they did. This court entered an Agreed Order on December 2, 2016, dismissing all of the individual Defendants [doc. no. 153], leaving Miller's former employer, MTC, as the sole Defendant.

On March 23, 2017, this court granted MTC's June 24, 2016, Motion for Summary Judgment as to all issues, dismissing Miller's Complaint with prejudice. [doc. no. 173]. Defendant MTC then, prevailed on all claims.

Miller appealed that dismissal and judgment granting MTC's summary judgment motion. The appellate body, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, affirmed this district

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court's decision in a one- paragraph decision.^[13]

On April 6, 2017, while the appeal of the summary judgment was still pending, ^[14] MTC filed its Motion for Award of Attorneys' fees [doc. no. 177] against Miller and his attorneys, James Monroe Scurlock and Matthew Reid Krell.^[15]

In that motion MTC argued that it was entitled to an award of attorneys' fees on two grounds: a) as the prevailing party under Title VII...