Yeh v. U.S. Bureau of Prisons
| Decision Date | 30 March 2020 |
| Docket Number | Civil No. 3:18-CV-943 |
| Parties | JOHN TC YEH, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES BUREAU OF PRISONS, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Pennsylvania |
(Magistrate Judge Carlson)
We now write the final chapter in a legal saga which has spanned many years, and entailed extensive administrative proceedings as well as federal district court litigation. The instant case, which comes before us for consideration of the plaintiff's attorneys' fees petition, involved a claim under the Rehabilitation Act ("RA"), 29 U.S.C. § 794, brought by a deaf federal inmate, John Yeh. Yeh, who has been profoundly deaf since birth, sought administrative relief from the United States Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") due to the inadequate technology at the Federal Correctional Institution at Schuylkill ("FCI Schuylkill"), which denied Yeh an equal opportunity to communicate with his family members, counsel, and other individuals outside of the correctional facility. Several months after receiving administrative relief in the form of an order to install videophone technology at FCI Schuylkill, Yeh brought this action against the BOP, which sought injunctive relief and alleged that the continuing failure to install appropriate videophone technology violated section 504 of the RA. Ultimately, a videophone was installed at FCI Schuylkill in November of 2018.
Yeh was subsequently released from custody. As a result of this development, the district court, Munley J., dismissed this case as moot, thus resolving the merits litigation in this case. What remains, then, is the plaintiff's petition for attorneys' fees. (Doc. 84). The parties have consented to magistrate judge jurisdiction for the resolution of this fees petition. (Doc. 94). This motion is fully briefed and is, therefore, ripe for resolution. For the reasons set forth below, this motion, (Doc. 84), will be GRANTED in part as follows: Plaintiff's counsel are entitled to a fees award for the work they performed in the administrative proceedings in this case, along with their work in preparing the complaint which allowed the court to consider their administrative proceedings fees, as well as the time spent litigating this fees petition. The plaintiff's counsel's petition for attorneys' fees for district court preliminary injunction and merits litigation, however, will be disallowed.
John Yeh has been an inmate in the BOP since 2012, following his conviction on federal fraud offenses. Yeh was sentenced to 108-months imprisonment. Heremained in federal custody until April 18, 2019, when Yeh was placed in a halfway house and later was moved to home detention.
From the outset of his incarceration, Yeh was housed at FCI Schuylkill, a facility that provided text-telephone services ("TTY") for deaf or hearing-impaired inmates. Nearly five years ago, in 2015, Yeh requested access to a videophone, a form of technology that enables a person whose primary language is American Sign Language ("ASL") to communicate more efficiently with others. This request was denied based on the availability of the TTY services.
In September 2015, Yeh filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity ("EEO") to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, alleging that FCI Schuylkill violated the RA when it denied his request for a videophone. The EEO denied Yeh's request on March 24, 2016, reasoning that the TTY was adequate to accommodate Yeh's needs. He appealed this decision pursuant to 28 C.F.R. § 170(i) and requested a hearing, after which an Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") sustained the finding that the TTY was an appropriate accommodation. Yeh then filed a Letter of Exceptions to the ALJ's decision with the Department of Justice Complaint Adjudication Officer ("CAO") on April 24, 2017.
On February 5, 2018, the CAO issued a decision, which found that the TTY did not provide Yeh with equal opportunity for communication at FCI Schuylkill, and that the BOP had not provided any evidence that the installation of a videophonewould pose undue administrative or financial hardships. The CAO noted the BOP's legitimate security concerns, but ultimately found that a videophone would provide Yeh with significantly greater communication opportunities than the TTY. In so finding, the CAO expressly cautioned Yeh that the installation of the videophone would take time and patience.
Three months after this decision, Yeh filed his complaint with this court, alleging a violation of section 504 of the RA, 29 U.S.C. § 794, based on the BOP's continuing failure to install the videophone in accordance with the CAO's decision. (Doc. 1). Along with this complaint, Yeh filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, which sought an order directing the defendants to immediately install a videophone at Schuylkill. (Doc. 2). We then entered a series of orders to permit an expedited development of the factual record and held a hearing on the motion for preliminary injunction on August 10, 2018. (Docs. 15, 20, 28, 29). The hearing revealed that there were many steps involved in the installation process, including but not limited to infrastructure installation, internet service acquisition from private vendors, and ensuring adequate institutional security. Further, several of these steps involved outside third-party contractors who were not parties to this litigation. Therefore, we held the motion under advisement and simultaneously instituted a program of reporting and case management, reporting on the Bureau of Prisons' progress in ensuring that the relief which the Department of Justice had administrativelydetermined was appropriate for Yeh—the installation of a videophone—was accomplished in a timely fashion. By December 4, 2018, the Bureau of Prisons reported that the videophone had been installed at Schuylkill and that Yeh had made 44 calls totaling 182 minutes. (Doc. 54). Thus, by late 2018, some three years after he began pursuing this administrative claim under the RA, Yeh received the principal relief which he sought in these administrative proceedings.
Given this significant development, on December 12, 2018, we issued a Report and Recommendation recommending that the motion for preliminary injunction be denied. (Doc. 57). In short, we recognized that, because the videophone had been installed at Schuylkill, "no further action [was] needed at this time to achieve the preliminary relief sought by Yeh." (Id., at 13). Moreover, we noted that granting the injunctive relief that Yeh sought would have been problematic, as much of the installation process relied heavily on private persons that were not parties to this litigation. (Id.) Thus, we recommended that the motion be denied without prejudice to renewal if the videophone access at Schuylkill was improperly terminated or curtailed. (Id., at 14). The District Court adopted our Report and Recommendation and denied the motion without prejudice on January 4, 2019. (Doc. 58).
Subsequently, the defendants filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings, (Doc. 59), which argued, inter alia, that the complaint was moot because Yeh hadreceived the relief he requested and was later released from custody. (Doc. 63, at 1). On August 6, 2019, the district court found that this lawsuit was now moot given Yeh's release from custody, resolving this merits litigation. (Docs. 81-83).
The plaintiff then filed the instant petition for attorneys' fees.
Our consideration of this fees petition is guided by certain settled legal principles. At the outset, like many federal civil rights statutes, the Rehabilitation Act ("RA"), 29 U.S.C. § 794, has a fee shifting provision which allows a prevailing party in litigation to collect attorneys' fees for having vindicated the statutory rights of the disabled. Specifically, 29 U.S.C. § 794a(b) provides that in "any action or proceeding to enforce or charge a violation of a provision [the RA]," the court "may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs." Therefore, the threshold question that must be addressed when considering any fees petition is the issue of whether the petitioning plaintiff is a prevailing party.
In some instances, as in this case, a plaintiff has engaged in extensive administrative agency litigation in order to vindicate some statutory disability rights. After prevailing before the administrative agency, the plaintiff may then seek to enforce that administrative agency decision in federal court and seek attorney's feesas a prevailing party in the administrative agency proceedings. Because 29 U.S.C. § 794a(b) provides for fees award in "any action or proceeding to enforce or charge a violation of a provision [the RA]," courts have construed the RA as providing fee recoveries both to prevailing parties in legal actions, and for those parties who prevail in agency proceedings. See M.G. v. E. Reg'l High Sch. Dist., 386 F. App'x 186, 187 (3d Cir. 2010). We construe the plaintiff's complaint as seeking such fees, both for the agency proceedings and for the work done in the district court. Accordingly, we will separately assess Yeh's entitlement to fees for both the agency proceedings and the federal court litigation.
When determining whether a plaintiff is a prevailing party before the district court, it is not enough to say that the plaintiff's lawsuit was simply a "catalyst" which inspired timely action by the defendants. Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. W. Virginia Dep't of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 598, 609, 121 S. Ct. 1835, 1843, 149 L. Ed. 2d 855 (2001). More is needed to attain prevailing party status in federal court. Thus, we are instructed to apply a two-part test in determining whether a party has prevailed in federal court in a way that creates an entitlement to attorneys' fees. First, we are called upon...
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