It would have been easy to simply reverse in a brief unpublished memorandum disposition, or to reverse with some skimpy analysis. But Judge Bress doesn't take the absurdly easy route. His opinion is relatively short -- ten pages -- but it takes the issues seriously, and then adds something helpful at the end.
It's an Americans with Disabilities Act case filed by a high-frequency litigant, so the defendant (potentially very smartly) doesn't even respond to the complaint and lets his default be taken. As a result, the plaintiff gets injunctive relief -- an order to comply with the ADA -- but nothing else. The district court is clearly not psyched by the plaintiff's tactics, so doesn't award even a penny of fees, despite the somewhat small amount ($9,364) requested by plaintiff. The district court's theory was that since all that the plaintiff got was an order that required defendant to comply with an already-existing law, she wasn't a prevailing party at all, since nothing changed.
Judge Bress disagrees, and he's right. The judgment changes the situation of the parties. The injunction makes it much easier to actually enforce the ADA (with contempt), and that rightly counts as "winning" under the ADA. You're a prevailing party. The analysis by Judge Bress on this point is cogent and compelling.
Then, at the end, Judge Bress adds a tangential discussion about fees, and I think it's a helpful one. Not only in this case, but in cases generally. He writes:
"To the extent Price asks us to rule on the amount of fees
she should receive, we leave that determination for the
district court in the first instance. But to provide guidance
to the district court and Price on remand, we make a brief
observation on one argument that Price advances in this
court.
The district court found that even if Price were a
prevailing party, her counsel “would not be entitled to the
unreasonable amount that they request.” Price, 761 F. Supp.
3d at 1290. The court noted that Price’s fee motion appeared
to be “recycled . . . nearly whole-cloth from another recent
case” her attorneys had filed. Id. at 1289. As a result, the
motion had copy-paste errors, did not reflect the procedural
history of the case, and used incorrect male pronouns for Ms.
Price. Price’s counsel does not dispute reusing a template
from a prior case. But in briefing before this court, counsel characterizes the errors the district court identified as
“irrelevant editing mistakes that would have required
additional billable time to address.”
It should go without saying that the issues the district
court identified are not “irrelevant editing mistakes,” but
instead reflect a lack of diligence. Sound lawyering (of
course) includes making sure that the fee motion papers
pertain to the case at issue. Courts consider the “[q]uality of
representation” when determining a reasonable fee award.
Van Gerwen v. Guar. Mut. Life Co., 214 F.3d 1041, 1046
(9th Cir. 2000). And we have affirmed that in “a
‘straightforward’ ADA case with boilerplate pleadings,
minimal legal complexity, and little in the way of difficult
fact discovery,” a reduction in fees can be justified,
particularly when the case involves a “serial” plaintiff and a
“lack of meaningful opposition” by the defendant. Shayler
v. 1310 PCH, LLC, 51 F.4th 1015, 1017, 1021 (9th Cir.
2022).
The district court’s concerns with Price’s lawyering and
the quality of the fee petition may appropriately factor into
any fee award determination. But because the district court
did not reach what a reasonable fee award would be, we
remand for the court to address that issue."
Nice finish.
