Spell v. McDaniel

• Citation: 616 F. Supp. 1069
• Decision Date: 10 July 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-06-CIV-3.,84-06-CIV-3.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of North Carolina
• Parties: Henry Z. SPELL, Plaintiff, v. Charles D. McDANIEL, Ind. & as patrolman, City of Fayetteville Police Department; William P. Dalton, Command Sergeant, City of Fayetteville Police Department; Roger T. Holman, Command Sergeant, City of Fayetteville Police Department, William C. Johnson, Director of Internal Affairs Division, City of Fayetteville Police Department; Daniel K. Dixon, Chief, City of Fayetteville Police Department; John P. Smith, City Manager, City of Fayetteville; and the City of Fayetteville, N.C., a municipal corporation, Defendants.

616 F. Supp. 1069

Henry Z. SPELL, Plaintiff, v. Charles D. McDANIEL, Ind. & as patrolman, City of Fayetteville Police Department; William P. Dalton, Command Sergeant, City of Fayetteville Police Department; Roger T. Holman, Command Sergeant, City of Fayetteville Police Department, William C. Johnson, Director of Internal Affairs Division, City of Fayetteville Police Department; Daniel K. Dixon, Chief, City of Fayetteville Police Department; John P. Smith, City Manager, City of Fayetteville; and the City of Fayetteville, N.C., a municipal corporation, Defendants.

No. 84-06-CIV-3.

United States District Court, E.D. North Carolina, Fayetteville Division.

July 10, 1985.

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Gerald Beaver, Fayetteville, N.C., for plaintiff.

Robert C. Cogswell, Jr., Fayetteville, N.C., for Homan, Dalton, Johnson, Smith & City of Fayetteville.

Bobby G. Deaver, Fayetteville, N.C., for C. McDaniel.

Carl A. Barrington, Jr., Fayetteville, N.C., for D. Dixon.

ORDER

JAMES C. FOX, District Judge.

This matter is before the Court on plaintiff's application for an award of reasonable attorney's fees as the prevailing party under the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976, 42 U.S.C. § 1988.¹ Plaintiff's counsel have filed extensive affidavits requesting compensation for a total of 2,087.60 hours of time, worth, in their estimation, $240,350.00. This lodestar figure, they propose, should then be increased by a discretionary multiplier in recognition of what they contend to be the extraordinary risks associated with the contingent nature of this case and the superior performance of counsel as well as the exceptional result. In addition, plaintiff seeks costs totalling $19,741.90. For the reasons that follow, a substantial fee is clearly mandated and, under the circumstances of this litigation, a significant multiplier is warranted.

Defendants, in their opposition to plaintiff's request, challenge 932.8 of counsel's hours on a variety of broad-based as well as line-item grounds. These objections, well over two hundred (200) in number, can somewhat be categorized into the following arguments:

1. a portion of the fee petition seeks compensation for time and effort spent on unsuccessful claims and motions;

2. plaintiff's documentation is inadequate or inaccurate;

3. the use of multiple counsel resulted in a substantial and unnecessary duplication of effort;

4. a number of hours claimed were excessive, unwarranted and unreasonable;

5. attorneys were unreasonably used to perform paralegal and clerical tasks;

6. most of the costs requested are not properly recoverable; and

7. a multiplier is not justified. Each argument will be addressed in detail in this opinion. However, at the outset, the Court feels it imperative to set forth the principles which it finds must govern its fee petition analysis.

I. BASIC PRINCIPLES OF FEE PETITION ANALYSIS

In resolving the issues raised by plaintiff's application and defendants' objections thereto, the Court is caught between several competing concerns. The Court must, of course, be supplied with sufficient information from which it can determine a reasonable and equitable fee. Counsel for plaintiff clearly bear the burden of documenting and submitting evidence to support their claim of hours and costs expended in the litigation, as well as hourly rates and enhancement requested. Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983). Although fee applications come in all shapes and sizes, there is a definite minimum of documentation required to substantiate counsel's claims before the court can act on the application. It is not the Court's goal to describe that minimum at this point in the opinion — that comes later — only to establish the existence of the requirement and its purpose, which is to provide the defendants with the opportunity to meaningfully scrutinize the reasonableness of the award requested and to present any legitimate objections. National Association of Concerned Veterans v. Secretary of Defense, 675 F.2d 1319, 1324 (D.C.Cir.1982).

By the same token, the party opposing the application must submit specific and detailed objections. Just as the fee applicant cannot submit a conclusory application, an opposing party does not meet its burden by simply asserting broad challenges to the petition. Id. at 1338 (Tamm, J., concurring). Evidence must be submitted in support of any assault on the application and the more extensive the attack, the more evidence required.

The problem district courts now face, as in the case sub judice, is how to avoid allowing fee applications to assume massive proportions, thereby dwarfing the underlying litigation on the merits. Laffey v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 572 F.Supp. 354, 389 (D.D.C.1983), reversed in part, 746 F.2d 4 (D.C.Cir.1984). See also Copeland v. Marshall, 641 F.2d 880, 896 (D.C.Cir. 1980) (en banc). The Supreme Court has admonished the lower courts that "requests for attorney's fees should not result in a second major litigation," Hensley v. Eckerhart, 103 S.Ct. at 1941, yet this Court finds it almost impossible to "avoid becoming ensnared in the minute details of the professional relationship under scrutiny while at the same time insisting upon specific documentation for every component of the fee award." Laffey, 572 F.Supp. at 389. The Supreme Court's admonishment is extremely difficult to effectuate given that Court and the Courts of Appeals' increasing insistence upon detailed supporting documentation by the parties and findings by the district court — "ironically, in conjunction with judgments that are conceded to be uniquely within the capacity of the trial court and that are theoretically committed to its discretion...." Id. See also Laffey, 746 F.2d at 31 and 39 (Wright, J., dissenting).

In resolving this conflict between requiring detail and exercising well-informed discretion, this Court, where it is necessary in this opinion, chooses the latter. The Court has been involved continually with this action since its filing in January of 1984, having witnessed or reviewed the conduct of nearly the entire case. Numerous pre and post-trial hearings on motions were held by Magistrate Dixon, with whom the Court has been in constant communication throughout the litigation. In addition, at this Court's order, the Magistrate conducted extremely extensive and exhaustive pretrial conferences and hearings. The Magistrate's pre-trial efforts not only assisted in providing the parties an equitable and expeditious trial, but also allowed the Court to gain a tremendous amount of knowledge about the complex evidentiary and factual issues in the case prior to the commencement of trial.

Furthermore, the court's resident law clerk in Fayetteville has maintained, by necessity, almost daily contact with the parties since December of 1984. The Court has taken the time to recite this background to establish the depth of the Court's involvement in this litigation and its knowledge of counsel who tried the case.

With this background in mind, the Court approaches plaintiff's fee petition and defendants' objections with the firm intention of not allowing its inquiry to assume "massive proportions" or "result in a second major litigation." In this regard, the Court has previously determined that an evidentiary hearing was unnecessary to resolve defendants' objections. Order of May 28, 1985.² Given the Court's intimate knowledge of this case, the depth of the briefing on plaintiff's fee petition, the detail of plaintiff's verified motion and affidavits,³ the extensiveness of the written record, the submission for in camera review of counsel for plaintiff's contemporaneous and original time logs, this court's knowledge of the quality of plaintiff's counsels' performance throughout this litigation, and the fact that defendants have submitted little or no credible evidence in support of their objections, the Court is confident that the decisions rendered herein are well-founded. The result is an adequate fee award for plaintiff's counsel and one which does not unfairly or unjustly burden the defendants.

In exercising its discretion in certain areas and refusing to rule independently on each and every line-item objection tendered by defendants, the Court is not abdicating its function to fully explore the merits of plaintiff's fee petition; rather, it is simply performing its task in a manner it feels is economical for the judicial system, which has already devoted extraordinary amounts of time to this litigation, and procedurally fair to both parties.

Before the Court proceeds to address defendants' objections, a review of this litigation is in order as a preface to the discussions which follow:

II. BACKGROUND

Plaintiff initiated this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by complaint filed January 26, 1984. The complaint, as amended, alleged that on November 19, 1983, plaintiff was arrested by defendant McDaniel in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for driving while impaired and possession of a controlled substance. McDaniel transported Spell to the Law Enforcement Center (LEC) for breathalyzer testing and arrest procedures. Upon completion of the breathalyzer examination, Spell alleged that while handcuffed, he was removed to the Fayetteville Police Department (F.P.D.) Assembly Room, whereupon McDaniel, without justification or provocation, assaulted Spell by striking him with his hands and by kneeing him in the testicles with such force that plaintiff suffered permanent loss of his right testicle. Spell contended he was rendered irreversibly sterile as a result of McDaniel's actions.

Plaintiff further alleged that McDaniel's actions were in furtherance of and under color of the official policy, practice, custom and procedure of the F.P.D. See Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). Plaintiff set...