Nadeau v. Helgemoe

• Decision Date: 28 July 1978
• Docket Number: No. 78-1019,78-1019
• Parties: Larry NADEAU et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Raymond A. HELGEMOE, Warden, New Hampshire State Prison, et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 275

581 F.2d 275

Larry NADEAU et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Raymond A. HELGEMOE, Warden, New Hampshire State Prison, et

al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 78-1019.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Argued June 6, 1978.

Decided July 28, 1978.

Jeffry A. Schapiro, Manchester, N.H., for plaintiffs, appellants.

James C. Sargent, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Concord, N.H., with whom Thomas D. Rath, Atty. Gen., Concord, N.H., on brief, for defendants, appellees.

Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, ALDRICH and CAMPBELL, Circuit Judges.

COFFIN, Chief Judge.

For several years New Hampshire Legal Assistance has been representing the plaintiff class, the inmates held in protective custody at the New Hampshire State Prison, in a § 1983 suit alleging that the conditions of confinement imposed on plaintiffs violates various provisions of the Constitution. In December, 1976, the district court concluded that plaintiffs' allegations were supported and awarded them significant injunctive relief, 423 F.Supp. 1250 (D.N.H.1976). New Hampshire appealed and in August, 1977, we affirmed the district court in part and reversed its decision in part. 561 F.2d 411 (1st Cir. 1977).

Much of the district court's analysis was based on its view that the treatment of prisoners must be in accord with some legitimate penological purpose to meet constitutional requirements. We rejected that standard of review, but were unable to determine with any degree of confidence which of the district court's conclusions and the consequent relief it had ordered was supportable by more traditional Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment analysis. Accordingly we remanded the case to the district court and directed it to scrutinize plaintiffs' conditions of confinement from a less exacting perspective. However, we affirmed that part of the district court's opinion and order concerned with expanding plaintiffs' access to library facilities.

Before trial was resumed, in October of 1977, the parties entered into a consent decree which was subsequently approved by the district court. On the basis of their limited success on appeal and the changes in plaintiffs' conditions of confinement required by the consent decree, plaintiffs' counsel moved for an award of attorney's fees pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988, the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976. The district court denied plaintiffs any attorney's fees on the ground that they were not the "prevailing parties" in the litigation. While agreeing that "the consent decree entered into has resulted in considerable improvement for the plaintiff class as compared to the conditions they were subjected to prior to the institution of this suit", the court nevertheless concluded that fees were inappropriate since the improvements reflected, "not only the intensive work and effort of plaintiffs' attorneys, but also a good faith effort on the part of (Assistant) Attorney (General) Sargent and Warden Perrin to improve conditions at the New Hampshire State Prison." Plaintiffs appeal that denial.

For purposes of analysis plaintiffs' request can best be discussed by distinguishing between two separate rationales for an award of attorney's fees. ¹ First, plaintiffs argue that the vindication of their rights to increased access to library facilities, affirmed by this court on appeal, requires that they be denoted prevailing parties for that part of this litigation and that at a minimum they should receive an award proportional to their effort on that issue. Second, they argue that the achievements formalized in the consent decree, allegedly due in significant part to their efforts, should also be considered sufficiently "prevailing" to support an attorney fees award. We shall discuss each rationale in turn.

The new Attorney's Fees Awards Act makes it clear that only " prevailing parties" may be awarded attorney's fees, but it does not elaborate on the criteria courts should employ in determining when a party has met that standard. The legislative history strongly suggests that a plaintiff who is partially successful in achieving the relief sought may still receive an award. Thus in discussing Pendente lite awards, the Senate Report states, "Such awards are especially appropriate where a party has prevailed on an important matter in the course of litigation, even when he ultimately does not prevail on all issues." Senate Rep. No. 94-1011, 5 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 5908, 5912 (1976). The relevant case law confirms this principle. ²

Many courts have awarded fees to plaintiffs who have succeeded in proving class wide discrimination but failed to establish that they had individually suffered injury and were entitled to personal remedies. See Bolton v. Murray Envelope Corp., 553 F.2d 881 (5th Cir. 1977); Barnett v. W. T. Grant Co., 518 F.2d 543 (4th Cir. 1975); Parham v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., 433 F.2d 421 (8th Cir. 1970); Saracini v. Missouri Pac. R. Co., 431 F.Supp. 389 (E.D.Ark.1977). Other courts have awarded fees in the reverse situation in which plaintiff was successful on his individual claim but did not prevail on his class wide allegations, Taylor v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 524 F.2d 263 (10th Cir. 1975), or have awarded fees when plaintiff achieved the injunctive relief she sought, but was unsuccessful as to her damage claim, Rosenfeld v. Southern Pacific Co., 519 F.2d 527 (9th Cir. 1975). In Taylor v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., 6 E.P.D. P 8696 (D.C.Ala.1973), plaintiffs were awarded attorney's fees for prevailing on seniority rights and sick pay claims but losing on job classification and back pay issues. The court in Younger v. Glamorgan Pipe and Foundry Co., 418 F.Supp. 743 (W.D.Va.1976), Vacated on other grounds, 561 F.2d 563 (4th Cir. 1977), awarded fees to plaintiffs despite the fact that they had prevailed on only one of 15 issues.

Given the legislative history and case law cited above, we conclude that plaintiffs may be considered "prevailing parties" for attorney's fees purposes if they succeed on any significant issue in litigation which achieves some of the benefit the parties sought in bringing suit. However, the amount of attorney's fees they receive should be based on the work performed on the issues in which they were successful. In this case the statements of plaintiffs' counsel submitted to the court do not purport to indicate how much time was devoted to each issue or to the library access issue. But it does not appear that the question whether success on one issue entitled plaintiffs to be considered "prevailing parties" was made the focus of any consideration, and we cannot fairly hold plaintiffs foreclosed from attempting to reconstruct their time through estimates. As for the future, we would not view with sympathy any claim that a district court abused its discretion in awarding unreasonably low attorney's fees in a suit in which plaintiffs were only partially successful if counsel's records do not provide a proper basis for determining how much time was spent on particular claims.

In the instant case, we have no choice but to remand this matter for additional evaluation by the district court. We think it is clear that the library access issue was significant enough a victory for plaintiffs to be considered prevailing parties. For their work on that issue they "should ordinarily recover an attorney's fee unless special circumstances would render such an award unjust." Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U.S. 400, 402, 88 S.Ct. 964, 966, 19 L.Ed.2d 1263 (1968); See Perez v. Rodriguez Bou, supra, at 24. The district court made no mention of this issue in denying plaintiffs' request for attorney's fees and no special circumstances requiring a denial of an award have been brought to our attention other than the alleged impracticality of dividing up counsel's hours between the library issue and the other issues in this case. That in itself is an insufficient basis for denying fees entirely. ³ We would add that although this issue was significant enough to pass the threshold qualification of "prevailing parties", it by no means could be said to have dominated the litigation. This factor of proportionality should be kept in mind in arriving at a fee award under this first rationale.

The second issue relating to attorney's fees based on the improvements in plaintiffs' conditions of confinement as required by the consent decree is more difficult to resolve. It is abundantly clear and the Senate Report specifically states that in general "parties may be considered to have prevailed when they vindicate rights through a consent judgment or without formally obtaining relief. Kopet v. Esquire Realty Co., 523 F.2d 1005 (2nd Cir. 1975) and cases cited therein; Parham v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., 433 F.2d 421 (8th Cir. 1970); Richards v. Griffith Rubber Mills, 300 F.Supp. 338 (D.Or.1969); Thomas v. Honeybrook Mines, Inc., 428 F.2d 981 (3rd Cir. 1970); Aspira of New York, Inc. v. Board of Education of City of New York, 65 F.R.D. 541 (S.D.N.Y.1975)." Senate Rep. No. 94-1011, Supra. See also Brown v. Culpepper, 559 F.2d 274 (5th Cir. 1977); Evans v. Sheraton Park Hotel, 164 U.S.App.D.C. 86, 503 F.2d 177 (1974); Parker v. Matthews, 411 F.Supp. 1059 (D.D.C.1976), Aff'd, Parker v. Califano, 182 U.S.App.D.C. 322, 561 F.2d 320 (1977). It is often explained that when plaintiff's lawsuit acts as a "catalyst" in prompting defendants to take action to meet plaintiff's claims, attorney's fees are justified despite the lack of judicial involvement in the result. See Fischer v. Adams, 572 F.2d 406 at 410 (1st Cir. 1978); Evans v. Sheraton Park Hotel, supra; Parham v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., supra; Mental Patient Civil Liberties v. Hospital Staff, 444 F.Supp. 981, 986 (E.D.Pa.1977).

However, applying the rule is not so simple as stating it. The two bounds of the continuum are well represented by the cases. In Parham v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., supra, the...