Trump v. The Wis. Elections Comm'n
| Docket Number | 20-cv-1785-BHL |
| Decision Date | 06 December 2021 |
| Parties | DONALD J. TRUMP, Plaintiff, v. THE WISCONSIN ELECTIONS COMMISSION, ET AL. Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Wisconsin |
ORDER DENYING MOTIONS FOR ATTORNEYS' FEES
On December 12, 2020, this Court rejected Plaintiff Donald J Trump's claim that the Defendants, a group of state and local government officials, violated the Electors Clause in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. The ruling came just ten days after Plaintiff filed his complaint and just two days after the parties offered argument based on a set of stipulated facts. Plaintiff appealed, and, on December 24 2020, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the Court's ruling. The entire episode appeared to be over in less than a month.
Then three months later, three groups of defendants returned to this Court, asking for an award of attorneys' fees against Plaintiff and his counsel. Defendant Tony Evers, the Governor of Wisconsin, seeks to recover his attorneys' fees and costs under 28 U.S.C. §1927 and the Court's inherent authority. ECF No. 144. Defendants George L Christenson and Julietta Henry, respectively the Milwaukee County Clerk and Elections Director, (the Milwaukee County Movants) join Governor Evers' arguments. ECF No. 155. Defendants Cory Mason, Tara Coolidge, John Antaramian, Matt Krauter, Eric Genrich, and Kris Teske, the Mayors and City Clerks of Racine, Kenosha, and Green Bay, (the City Movants) also seek fees and costs under Section 1927 and the Court's inherent authority, but additionally invoke 28 U.S.C. §1988, which allows the Court to award fees to “prevailing parties” in civil rights lawsuits. ECF No. 152.
In the end, all three groups' requests for fees must be denied because the Court lacks jurisdiction to grant them. In Overnite Transp. Co. v. Chicago Indust. Tire Co., 697 F.2d 789, 792 (7th Cir. 1983), the Seventh Circuit held that a motion for attorneys' fees is filed too late, and a district court lacks jurisdiction to grant it, if the movant waits to seek relief until after the conclusion of an appeal on the merits. The Court of Appeals has never overruled this longstanding precedent, which this Court must therefore follow. See Lightspeed Media Corp. v. Smith, 761 F.3d 699, 707-08 (7th Cir. 2014) (). Accordingly, all three pending motions for fees will be denied.
Even if Overnite was not an obstacle, this Court would decline to exercise its discretion to award fees to the first two groups of movants. Governor Evers and the Milwaukee County Movants have not established that the conduct of Plaintiff and his lawyers toward them warrants an award of fees. Plaintiff may have had far from noble intentions in filing this lawsuit, but his legal claims were not frivolous, and his counsel's litigation of the case was not sufficiently unreasonable or vexatious to warrant an award of fees. The City Movants stand on different ground, however. They have shown that Plaintiff and his counsel continued the case against them without offering any material evidence of their personal involvement in the challenged conduct that lies at the heart of Plaintiff's claims. The pursuit of claims against them was therefore unnecessary, unreasonable, and vexatious within the meaning of Section 1927. Moreover, these movants are also prevailing parties entitled to fees under Section 1988, a provision none of the other movants invokes. Thus, of the three groups of movants, the Court would award fees to only the third group, if it had the jurisdiction to do so.[1]
Plaintiff opposes all three motions for fees on grounds that the Seventh Circuit's Overnite decision renders the requests untimely and beyond this Court's jurisdiction. ECF No. 164 at 25- 34. Based on Overnite's holding, the Court has no choice but to agree.
In Overnite, a plaintiff brought suit in federal court to recover freight charges under the Interstate Commerce Act. Overnite, 697 F.2d at 791. The district court dismissed the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, a ruling the Seventh Circuit later affirmed on appeal. 668 F.2d 274 (7th Cir. 1981). After prevailing on the appeal, the defendant sought an award of attorneys' fees in the district court under 28 U.S.C. §1927. 697 F.2d at 791. The district court granted the motion, concluding that the plaintiff's jurisdictional argument had “no basis in law.” Id. at 792. In a second appeal, the Seventh Circuit vacated the attorneys' fees award, holding the district court lacked jurisdiction to award fees in the first place. Id. at 793-94. The Court of Appeals explained that the defendant's filing of a notice of appeal from the district court's first jurisdictional ruling deprived the district court of further jurisdiction and thus additional proceedings could not take place in the district court without leave of the appellate court. Id. at 792. The Seventh Circuit then identified exceptions to this general rule, including where “jurisdiction is reserved expressly by statute, or if the court expressly reserves or retains such jurisdiction, or while the court is entertaining motions collateral to the judgment or motions which would aid in resolution of the appeal.” Id. at 792-94. But these “exceptions only apply to those motions filed with the [d]istrict [c]ourt while the appeal on the merits is pending.” Id. at 792. Because the district court had not reserved jurisdiction, jurisdiction was not reserved by statute, and no motions were filed in either the district court or Court of Appeals while the first appeal was pending, the Court of Appeals held the district court lacked jurisdiction to rule on the attorneys' fees motion. Id. at 793-94.
Movants acknowledge that Overnite has not been overruled but invite the Court to decide their motions anyway. Governor Evers criticizes Overnite, calling it both an “outlier” and “of questionable validity” and suggests it was “implicitly abrogated” by the Supreme Court. ECF No. 170 at 13-14. But counsel's disapproval of the Overnite holding is not a basis for this Court to disregard Seventh Circuit precedent. See Reiser v. Residential Funding Corp., 380 F.3d 1027, 1029 (7th Cir. 2004) ; Union Carbide Corp. v. Consol. Rail Corp., 517 F.Supp. 1094, 1097 (N.D. Ill. 1981) ( ).
Governor Evers' suggestion, see ECF No. 145 at 28-30, that three subsequent Supreme Court decisions have displaced Overnite and its holding does not bear scrutiny. The first case he cites, White v. New Hampshire. Dep't of Empl. Sec., 455 U.S. 445 (1982), concerned whether a motion for attorneys' fees under 42 U.S.C. §1988 was governed by Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e) and, hence, had to be filed within 10 (now 28) days of the entry of judgment. Id. at 446-47. In concluding that Rule 59(e) did not apply, the Court discussed the timeliness of motions for fees, but nothing in White touched upon, let alone abrogated, the Seventh Circuit's rationale in Overnite. Id. at 452-53. The other two cases Evers cites addressed district courts' authority to enter Rule 11 sanctions. In Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384 (1990), the Court confirmed that a district court retained jurisdiction to award fees under Rule 11 even after a voluntary dismissal. Id. at 395. And, in Willy v. Coastal Corp., 503 U.S. 131 (1992), the Court held that a district court that concluded it lacked subject matter jurisdiction could nevertheless impose Rule 11 sanctions for misconduct that occurred before the jurisdictional determination. Id. at 137-39. But neither Cooter & Gell nor Willy says anything about district court jurisdiction after the filing of a notice of appeal or the conclusion of an appeal on the merits-the issue addressed in Overnite.
Indeed, more than two decades after the latest of these Supreme Court cases, the Seventh Circuit discussed Overnite without any hint that the Court of Appeals thought the case no longer good law. In Lightspeed Media Corp., 761 F.3d at 707-08, the Seventh Circuit affirmed an award of attorneys' fees entered seven months after the underlying action had been voluntarily dismissed. In an opinion by then-Chief Judge Wood, the Court of Appeals cited and distinguished Overnite, but did not indicate the holding had been abrogated by the Supreme Court. See Id. The Court of Appeals held that the district court had retained jurisdiction to decide the motion for sanctions even after dismissal of the case because no appeal had been filed from the final judgment. Id. at 708. With no appeal from the merits ruling, jurisdiction remained in the district court and “[i]t was up to the district court to decide, in its discretion, whether [the] motion was timely.” Id. The panel affirmed the district court's award of fees, concluding that its timeliness determination was not an abuse of discretion. Id. Nothing in this analysis suggests the Court of Appeals thought Overnite had been “implicitly abrogated” by the Supreme Court.
It is undisputed that all three groups of moving defendants waited to seek fees until three months after the conclusion of Plaintiff's appeal on the merits in this case. This Court had not reserved jurisdiction, nor did jurisdiction remain in the Court by statut...
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