Out-of-Town Counsel Use/High Hourly Rates And Positive Multiplier Enhancement Dominate Discussion In Lengthy Unpublished Decision From Riverside DCA.
Although this case should be of interest to civil rights practitioners on the merits (discussing various evidentiary and instructional error issues), Ruelas v. Harper, Case No. E051961 (4th Dist., Div. 2 Oct. 6, 2015) (unpublished) has some nice takeaways on fee awards under civil rights statutes.
Although there was a partial reversal and remands, the appellate court did provide some guidance on the fee awards. First, it determined that attorney’s fees under section 1988 should be paid to the individual plaintiffs, not the attorneys. (Astrue v. Ratliff, 130 S.Ct. 2521, 2529 (2010).) Second, the reviewing court did not buy the argument that the fee awards were excessive for 7 years of active litigation and trial time for which verdicts were achieved in favor of numerous civil rights plaintiffs. Third, because the billing substantiation attached to the fee petitions was specific in nature, discovery could be denied by the trial court in its discretion into plaintiffs’ counsel’s billing records. (Riverside Sheriffs’ Assn. v. County of Riverside, 152 Cal.App.4th 414, 424-425 (2007).) Fourth, the fee claimants did a good job of showing the relevant community for hourly fees was the “greater L.A. area,” not just San Bernardino such that using Los Angeles and Orange County attorneys with $407 and $550 hourly rates was appropriate. Fifth, although acknowledging that one high billing civil rights senior specialist at $850 per hour did a great job, the reviewing court needed some more specificity from the fee claimants and the trial court in order to justify a positive multiplier on this attorney’s rates under Perdue, with the lower court not being able to use quality of representation or complexity factors given that these were already considered under the lodestar analysis of hourly rate reasonableness (put another way, no “double dipping” allowed as far as lodestar and multiplier analyses).