Pouncy v. City of Chi., Case No. 15-cv-1840

• Decision Date: 11 December 2017
• Docket Number: Case No. 15-cv-1840
• Parties: DEMETRIUS POUNCY, JR., Plaintiff, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

DEMETRIUS POUNCY, JR., Plaintiff,
v.
CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.

Case No. 15-cv-1840

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS EASTERN DIVISION

December 11, 2017

Judge Robert M. Dow, Jr.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Before the Court are Plaintiff's petition for attorneys' fees and costs, and in the alternative, for sanctions [72-1] and Plaintiff's bill of costs [68]. For the reasons stated below, the Court awards Plaintiff $64,462.50 in attorneys' fees, plus prejudgment interest from August 6, 2016. The Court further awards Plaintiff $981.70 in taxable costs and $986.70 in nontaxable costs. The Court denies Plaintiff's request for sanctions. The parties are directed to confer regarding the appropriate calculation of prejudgment interest and submit a proposed order incorporating that calculation along with the other amounts stated above no later than December 20, 2017.

I. Background

Plaintiff seeks $91,225.00 in attorneys' fees and $2,202.40 in taxable and nontaxable costs pursuant to an accepted Rule 68 offer of judgment, which allowed judgment to be taken against Defendants in favor of Plaintiff in the amount of $15,001 plus reasonable attorneys' fees and costs. In the alternative, Plaintiff also seeks to recover his attorneys' fees as a sanction for Defendants' failure to produce a relevant Tactical Response Report ("TRR") prior to June 2, 2016. Finally, Plaintiff requests over $22,000 in "fees on fees"—that is, attorney time expended to litigate this fee dispute.

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Plaintiff initially filed this § 1983 lawsuit pro se on February 1, 2015 against Detective John Doe, Detective Timothy O'Brien, and the City of Chicago. Plaintiff alleged that on August 27, 2013—after Plaintiff was arrested and charged with harassing a witness [74, at 4]—Detective John Doe used excessive force on Plaintiff by slamming him head-first into a wall. [1.] Plaintiff further alleged that Detective Timothy O'Brien failed to intervene.¹ [1.] On May 14, 2015, the Court recruited counsel to represent Plaintiff in this matter. [9.] Recruited counsel filed an amended complaint [8] and a motion to conduct expedited discovery to identify the unnamed defendant before the expiration of the two-year statute of limitations [13], which the Court granted. [17.]

Plaintiff then sought documents aimed at identifying the unnamed detective. Specifically, Plaintiff requested files with the event identification number RD HW368940/CB18731820, which was the event identification number associated with the harassment charges against Plaintiff. Plaintiff also requested any "Tactical Response Reports and/or Officer Battery Reports" regarding Plaintiff between August 26, 2013 to August 28, 2013, among other documents. [72-4.] Defendants emailed Plaintiff on July 22, 2015, indicating that they were able to locate the area file, but that "the request for any TRRs came back negative." [72-22.]

Because Plaintiff was not able to identify the unnamed defendant from the documents produced by Defendants before the statute of limitation expired, Plaintiff filed a second amended complaint on August 26, 2015, naming 45 Chicago detectives who were present and on-duty when the alleged incident occurred. [31, at ¶1; 35.]

On September 23, 2015, nearly a month after Plaintiff filed his second amended complaint, the city produced a case incident report that identified Detective Patrick Ford as the detective

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involved in the incident with Plaintiff. Plaintiff filed a third amended complaint on October 14, 2015 identifying Patrick Ford as the detective who allegedly used excessive force against Plaintiff [40] and voluntarily dismissed the other detectives named solely for the purpose of preventing the statute of limitations from expiring while Plaintiff continued to search for the detective involved in the incident with Plaintiff [39].

The parties continued discovery. Plaintiff served requests for production on Ford, in which Plaintiff requested, among other documents, "[a]ll documents created as a result of the August 27, 2013 arrest of and use of force against Plaintiff, including but not limited to arrest reports, general case reports, Tactical Response Reports, Officer Battery Reports, Injured on Duty Reports, use of force reports, lock-up reports, case incident reports or any other documents." [72-20, at 5.] Defense counsel served its response to this request on February 11, 2016, but did not produce the TRR from the incident involving Ford until June 2, 2016. Defendants' briefing indicates that the failure to earlier produce the relevant TRR was due to a misunderstanding regarding the event number assigned to the TRR. Specifically, Defendants used the event number from the assault charges against Plaintiff when they initially searched for a TRR. Defendants attach a copy of the search record from this initial search to their response brief. [90-6.] When Plaintiff served additional discovery requests in May of 2016, Defendants conducted a broader TRR search that produced the TRR relating to the incident between Ford and Plaintiff, which had a different event identifier. [90-11.] Defendants produced the TRR on June 2, 2016.

On June 7, 2016, Defendants sent Plaintiff a Rule 68 offer of judgment—which Plaintiff accepted that day—"in the amount of [$15,001] plus reasonable attorney's fees and costs as to Plaintiff accrued as of * * * June 7, 2016, in amount to be determined by the Court." [62-1, at ¶1.]

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On June 15, 2016, a little over a week after Plaintiff accepted Defendants' offer of judgment, Plaintiff's counsel wrote a letter to defense counsel requesting $91,225.00 in attorneys' fees and $2,202.40 in costs. [72-23.] In that letter, Plaintiff asserted for the first time that "the City knew that * * * Ford beat up [Plaintiff] * * * but did everything in its power to keep Ford's identity a secret," and indicating that such conduct was sanctionable. [72-23, at 1.] The parties exchanged further correspondence discussing Plaintiff's allegation that Defendants engaged in sanctionable conduct and also seeking to reach an agreement regarding the amount of attorneys' fees and costs that should be awarded to Plaintiff, as required by Local Rule 54.3(d).

With respect to the attorneys' fees dispute, the parties were unable to reach an agreement regarding (1) the applicability of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, (2) the reasonable hourly rate for Plaintiff's counsel, and (3) whether the time and nature of Plaintiff's counsel's billing was subject to objection. The parties also disagreed about the amount of costs Plaintiff was entitled to recover pursuant to the offer of judgment. As a result of these disputes, Plaintiff filed the petition for attorneys' fees and costs, and in the alternative, for sanctions [72] currently pending before this court.

Plaintiff seeks $91,225.00 in attorneys' fees and $2,202.40 in taxable and nontaxable costs. In the alternative, Plaintiff asks that the Court award its attorneys' fees as a sanction for Defendants' failure to produce the TRR before June 2, 2016, claiming that "a large portion of the attorney's fees accumulated would not have been accumulated had Defendants produced [the] easily attainable routine police report that they claimed for nearly a year did not exist." [72-1, at 1.] Plaintiff also requests over $22,000 in fees on fees.

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II. Analysis

The Court begins by noting that a "request for attorney's fees should not result in a second major litigation." Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 437 (1983). This is especially true in the context of Rule 68 offers of judgment, which are designed "to encourage settlement and avoid litigation." Webb v. James, 147 F.3d 617, 620 (7th Cir. 1998) (citing Marek v. Chesny, 473 U.S. 1, 5 (1985)). In this case, however, the parties filed nearly 50 exhibits and submitted nearly 500 pages of documents in connection with the fee petition pending before the Court. Despite these extensive submissions, the Court found that the parties left many issues undeveloped or underdeveloped [92] and requested supplemental briefing on certain issues. [See 94.] The Court recognizes that the fee petition pending before the Court involves more complicated legal issues than the typical fee petition. Still, many of the fee disputes in this case could have been avoided had the parties not simply left it to the Court to determine the amount of attorneys' fees and costs Plaintiff is entitled to receive.

A. Attorneys' Fees Pursuant to the Offer of Judgment

Turning to the merits of Plaintiff's fee petition, pursuant to the offer of judgment, Plaintiff is entitled to "reasonable attorney's fees and costs accrued as of June 7, 2016, in an amount to be determined by the Court." [63, at 1.] Initially Defendants argued that the Prison Reform Litigation Act ("PLRA") capped the amount of attorneys' fees Plaintiff could recover in conjunction with the accepted offer of judgment. [90, at 9-10.] After the Court requested supplemental briefing, however, Defendants abandoned their argument that the PLRA limits the amount of attorneys' fees Plaintiff can recover. [95, at 2.]

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The starting point for determining Plaintiff's "reasonable attorney's fees" is the lodestar,² which is the "the hours reasonably expended multiplied by the reasonable hourly rate." Johnson v. GDF, Inc., 668 F.3d 927, 929 (7th Cir. 2012). The Court has an obligation to "exclude from this initial fee calculation hours that were not 'reasonably expended'" on the litigation. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434. However, the Court is "not obligated to conduct a line-by-line review of the bills to assess the charges for reasonableness." Rexam Beverage Can Co. v. Bolger, 620 F.3d 718, 738 (7th Cir. 2010). The party seeking the fee award bears the burden of proving the reasonableness of the hours worked and the hourly rates claimed. Id. at 433.

Once the lodestar is determined, the Court must determine whether it is appropriate to...