Russo v. State of NY, 79 Civ. 1650.
| Citation | 515 F. Supp. 470 |
| Decision Date | 14 May 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 79 Civ. 1650.,79 Civ. 1650. |
| Parties | Anthony RUSSO and Joann Russo on behalf of themselves and their infant children, Rose Russo and Antonina Russo, Plaintiffs, v. STATE OF NEW YORK, State of New York Police Department, Lawrence Cichocki, Delbert George, Orange Motel Corporation, Tina Horton, Howard Johnson Company and Big V Supermarkets, Inc., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
Lawrence R. Posner, Newburgh, N. Y., for plaintiffs.
Law Office of Richard Hartman by Ronald J. Davis and Stewart Krupin, Mineola, N. Y., Robert Abrams, Atty. Gen. by Howard L. Zwickel, New York City, for defendants.
Plaintiff Anthony Russo, and three members of his family, brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that defendants deprived them of their constitutional rights. Plaintiffs also brought a number of state law claims, based upon the same series of events. Several of the claims and most of the defendants were dismissed by the Court or dropped by the plaintiffs prior to or during the trial. The jury found one of the two remaining defendants, State Trooper Lawrence Cichocki, liable to Anthony Russo for malicious prosecution under New York State law, and awarded him $25,000 in compensatory damages and $5,000 in punitive damages. The jury found no liability on both the section 1983 claim and the state claim of intentional infliction of emotional harm.
Anthony Russo has moved for attorney's fees pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988. For the reasons set forth in this Court's opinion in Meriwether v. Sherwood, 514 F.Supp. 433, 435-37, filed this date, plaintiff is a prevailing party, entitled to an award of attorney's fees. (No other basis exists for this award, since plaintiff's claim would be barred by Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 95 S.Ct. 1612, 44 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975).)
Plaintiff requests attorney's fees of $16,908.75. His attorney claims that he spent 225.45 hours preparing for and conducting the trial, and that he should be compensated at the rate of $75 an hour. He asserts that the computation of hours does not include time spent on motions or depositions relating to the defendants against whom claims were dropped prior to the trial. He also states that he has excluded time for which his records were imprecise. The attorney claims that his normal billing rate is $50 per hour, but that he charges $75 per hour for "complex litigation" which he defines as litigation that "differs a great deal from his normal stock of family court and other matrimonial litigation." Plaintiffs' attorney handled this case on a contingent-fee basis, under which he was to receive an amount equal to one-third of any recovery.
This Court has considered all of the documents submitted in connection with this motion, including those submitted by the State. Plaintiff's attorney's actual...
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Russo v. State of N. Y.
...Cichocki, a former New York State Trooper, appeals from a judgment entered after a jury trial in the United States District Court, 515 F.Supp. 470, for the Southern District of New York, Abraham D. Sofaer, Judge, awarding Anthony Russo $25,000 compensatory and $5,000 punitive damages upon a......
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Meriwether v. Sherwood
...claims that substantially vindicates his constitutional quest. A case that presents these special circumstances is Russo v. State of New York, D.C., 515 F.Supp. 470, 79 Civ. 1650 (ADS), in which a motion for attorney's fees is pending before this Court. The jury in Russo found that one defe......
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Russo v. State of New York, s. 161
...we reversed the judgment entered after a jury trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, 515 F.Supp. 470, awarding plaintiffs compensatory and punitive damages in a malicious prosecution action because we held that plaintiff Anthony Russo had not proved......