Shepherd v. Goord

• Decision Date: 15 November 2011
• Docket Number: Docket No. 10–4821–pr.
• Citation: 662 F.3d 603
• Parties: Eon SHEPHERD, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Glenn S. GOORD, Commissioner, Bennette, Superintendent, Wenderlich, Captain, John Doe, Deputy of Security, West, Deputy, Girdich, Superintendent, Ericson, Sergeant, Lester Wright, Maria Van Buren, Chief Medical Officer, N.A. Smith, Administrator, N.P. Parmer, Kim Perria, Nurse, Fairchild, Nurse, Jane Doe, Nurse, John Doe, Sergeant, John Doe, Nurse, Dr. Canfield, J. Colvin, Deputy of Security, J. Kremer, Sergeant, Riley, Nurse, Sullivan, Nurse, Defendants,Alan Twedt, Corrections Officer, Christopher Post, Sergeant, Defendants–Appellees.*
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

662 F.3d 603

Eon SHEPHERD, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.Glenn S. GOORD, Commissioner, Bennette, Superintendent, Wenderlich, Captain, John Doe, Deputy of Security, West, Deputy, Girdich, Superintendent, Ericson, Sergeant, Lester Wright, Maria Van Buren, Chief Medical Officer, N.A. Smith, Administrator, N.P. Parmer, Kim Perria, Nurse, Fairchild, Nurse, Jane Doe, Nurse, John Doe, Sergeant, John Doe, Nurse, Dr. Canfield, J. Colvin, Deputy of Security, J. Kremer, Sergeant, Riley, Nurse, Sullivan, Nurse, Defendants,Alan Twedt, Corrections Officer, Christopher Post, Sergeant, Defendants–Appellees.*

Docket No. 10–4821–pr.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Submitted: Oct. 4, 2011.Decided: Nov. 15, 2011.

Harrison V. Williams, Jr., Green & Seifter, PLLC, Syracuse, NY, for Plaintiff–Appellant.

Denise A. Hartman and Kate H. Nepveu, Assistant Solicitors General, of Counsel (Barbara D. Underwood, Solicitor General), on behalf of Eric T. Schneiderman, Attorney General of the State of New York, Albany, NY, for Defendants–Appellees.

Before: MINER, SACK, and RAGGI, Circuit Judges.

REENA RAGGI, Circuit Judge:

New York State prisoner Eon Shepherd, who practices Rastafarianism, sued New York Department of Corrections officials Alan Twedt and Christopher Post, among others, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging inter alia that these two defendants infringed his rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment by touching his dreadlocks without his consent. Following trial, a jury returned a verdict in favor of Shepherd but awarded him only $1.00 in actual damages.

Shepherd now appeals from that part of an amended judgment entered on October 26, 2010, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (David N. Hurd, Judge ), awarding him $1.50 in attorney's fees and ordering defendants to pay $1.40 of the fee award.¹ Shepherd contends that the district court erred in concluding that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(2), capped the maximum possible fee award in this case at 150 percent of the $1.00 monetary judgment. Reviewing that legal determination de novo, we reach the same conclusion as the district court: Section 1997e(d)(2) limits the possible award of attorney's fees in this case to 150 percent of the monetary judgment. Accordingly, we affirm the amended judgment.

I. BackgroundA. The Dreadlocks Incident

In his original complaint, Shepherd charged numerous prison officials and employees with various violations of his constitutional rights. The court or the jury resolved all but one of these claims in favor of defendants. Accordingly, we here discuss only the claim on which Shepherd prevailed, as it provides the sole basis for the challenged attorney's fee award.

On July 4, 2001, Shepherd was incarcerated in New York State's Elmira Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison, where he was serving an aggregate life sentence for robbery in the first degree, robbery in the second degree, and criminal possession of stolen property. See People v. Shepherd, 260 A.D.2d 649, 650, 687 N.Y.S.2d 269, 269 (2d Dep't 1999). That day, as Shepherd was leaving for evening recreation, defendants Twedt and Post searched Shepherd, including his hair, which was arranged in dreadlocks.² While one defendant held a metal detector over Shepherd's head, the other manually searched Shepherd's hair, despite Shepherd telling defendants that touching his dreadlocks without his permission violated his Rastafarian beliefs. See id.

B. District Court Proceedings

In a pro se complaint filed June 8, 2004, Shepherd charged Twedt and Post with violating his First Amendment right to the free exercise of his religion when they touched his “sacred” dreadlocks and “slightly tore” them. Compl. at 7–8, Shepherd v. Goord, No. 9:04–CV–655 (DNH) (N.D.N.Y. June 8, 2004), ECF No. 1. In May 2010, Shepherd, represented by pro bono counsel, presented his case to a jury, which returned a verdict in his favor, awarding $1.00 in actual damages and no punitive damages.³

Shepherd moved for attorney's fees in the amount of $99,485.25. See 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). Construing 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(2) to cap any fee award against defendants at 150 percent of the awarded damages, the district court concluded that Shepherd was entitled to only $1.50 in attorney's fees, against which it allocated 10 percent of the $1.00 damages award consistent with § 1997e(d)(2), see supra at [604 n. 1], for a final judgment of $1.00 in damages and $1.40 in attorney's fees.

This timely appeal followed.

II. DiscussionA. Standard of Review

We review a district court's award of attorney's fees for abuse of discretion, see McDaniel v. Cnty. of Schenectady, 595 F.3d 411, 416 (2d Cir.2010), which we will find only where the district court “(1) based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law, (2) made a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence, or (3) rendered a decision that cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions,” Lynch v. City of New York, 589 F.3d 94, 99 (2d Cir.2009) (internal quotation marks omitted). Because the charged abuse on this appeal is an error of law, our standard of review is de novo. See, e.g., Garcia v. Yonkers Sch. Dist., 561 F.3d 97, 103 (2d Cir.2009).

B. Section 1997e(d)(2 )

Shepherd submits that the district court erred in construing 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(2) to cap an attorney's fee award in favor of a prevailing prisoner-plaintiff and against a defendant at 150 percent of the monetary judgment. In construing this statute, we begin, as we must, with the text, see Global–Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., ––– U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 2060, 2065, 179 L.Ed.2d 1167 (2011); AMW Materials Testing, Inc. v. Town of Babylon, 584 F.3d 436, 445 (2d Cir.2009), which we consider in light of its statutory context, see Bruesewitz v. Wyeth LLC, ––– U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 1068, 1081, 179 L.Ed.2d 1 (2011); United States v. Aguilar, 585 F.3d 652, 656–57 (2d Cir.2009).

The possibility for fee awards in § 1983 cases derives from 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b), which states that “[i]n any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of section[ ] ... 1983 ... of this title, the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party ... a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs.” With the 1996 enactment of the PLRA, Congress imposed “substantial restrictions” on § 1988(b) attorney's fee awards to prevailing prisoner-plaintiffs. Blissett v. Casey, 147 F.3d 218, 220 (2d Cir.1998). Those restrictions state as follows:

(1) In any action brought by a prisoner who is confined to any jail, prison, or other correctional facility, in which attorney's fees are authorized under section 1988 of this title, such fees shall not be awarded, except to the extent that—

(A) the fee was directly and reasonably incurred in proving an actual violation of the plaintiff's rights protected by a statute pursuant to which a fee may be awarded under section 1988 of this title; and

(B)(i) the amount of the fee is proportionately related to the court ordered relief for the violation; or

(ii) the fee was directly and reasonably incurred in enforcing the relief ordered for the violation.

(2) Whenever a monetary judgment is awarded in an action described in paragraph (1), a portion of the judgment (not to exceed 25 percent) shall be applied to satisfy the amount of attorney's fees awarded against the defendant. If the award of attorney's fees is not greater than 150 percent of the judgment, the excess shall be paid by the defendant.

(3) No award of attorney's fees in an action described in paragraph (1) shall be based on an hourly rate greater than 150 percent of the hourly rate established under Section 3006A of Title 18 for payment of court-appointed counsel.

42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d) (emphasis added).

In this appeal, Shepherd agrees that his fee application is limited by the relative reasonableness and proportionality restriction of § 1997e(d)(1). He does not dispute the specific hourly rate limit of § 1997e(d)(3), the application of which would necessarily reduce his initial $99,485.25 fee demand to $46,575. His single challenge is to the construction of the highlighted language in § 1997e(d)(2) to cap his fee award at 150 percent of his $1.00 monetary judgment.

As this court previously has observed, the highlighted language in § 1997e(d)(2) is not a model of clarity. See Blissett v. Casey, 147 F.3d at 220 (noting § 1997e(d)(2)'s “unclear language”). Nevertheless, this language is not so ambiguous as to require us to resort to canons of statutory construction or to legislative history to discern its meaning. See Bruesewitz v. Wyeth LLC, 131 S.Ct. at 1081; United States v. Gray, 642 F.3d 371, 377 (2d Cir.2011). Indeed, for more than a decade, we have observed that § 1997e(d)(2) “effectively caps a defendant's liability for attorneys' fees in a prisoner's § 1983 action at 150% of a money judgment.” Torres v. Walker, 356 F.3d 238, 242 (2d Cir.2004); see Blissett v. Casey, 147 F.3d at 220 (stating that § 1997e(d)(2) “appears ... to provide that [fee award] is not to be borne by the defendant to the extent it exceeds 150 percent of the judgment”).

Shepherd submits that this precedent is not controlling because the “cap” recognized in these cases did not apply in the circumstances presented. See Torres v. Walker, 356 F.3d at 240 (holding that cap did not apply to money paid pursuant to so-ordered stipulation); Blissett v. Casey, 147 F.3d at 221 (holding that cap did not apply where representation was afforded before enactment of PLRA). Even if we were persuaded that any construction of § 1997e(d)(2) in these cases was dicta, that would not secure Shepherd relief on this appeal. We here conclude, consistent with these precedents, that § 1997e(d)(2) caps the amount of attorney's fees that a prevailing prisoner-plaintiff may recover from a defendant at 150 percent of the monetary judgment awarded, including when the judgment is only for $1.00. ⁴

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