9th Circuit Overturns Morrison & Foerster Fee Sanction
A federal appeals court has ordered a trial judge to award Morrison & Foerster reasonable attorney fees for its work in a civil rights case and overturned a sanction against a lawyer in the case.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with a trial judge’s assertion that the firm should be denied fees because its $727,000 fee request was so large that it shocked the conscience, the Daily Journal reports (sub. req.). There is no evidence the request was made in bad faith or contained excessive hours, the court said. The case had cost the firm $1.2 million.
A jury had awarded a plaintiff $1 in nominal damages for her wrongful arrest after her son was killed by police and $250,000 in punitive damages, reduced to $5,000 by U.S. District Judge George Shiavelli of Los Angeles, the story says.
Shiavelli had refused to award any attorney fees to the firm and had sanctioned lawyer Arturo Gonzalez, the chair of the firm’s trial practice, for sending another lawyer to represent him in a contempt hearing.
Shiavelli had threatened Gonzalez with contempt for continuing to question a witness after the judge sustained an objection; Gonzalez said he had merely rephrased the question to satisfy the objection.
The trial judge denied the request for fees and costs “solely on a legal standard that originates from outside this circuit: that a request for fees under § 1988 may be denied if it is ‘outrageously excessive’ or ‘inflated to an intolerable degree,’ ” the 9th Circuit said in its opinion (PDF). “We need not decide whether it would ever be appropriate for a court entirely to deny fees and costs under § 1988 purely on the excessiveness of the request, however, because those circumstances are not present here.”
The appeals court overturned the sanction against Gonzales on the ground that he did not have notice that his personal appearance was required at the contempt hearing.
The appeals court decision was not as favorable for the plaintiff, Evangelina Mendez. The appeals court upheld the reduced punitive award and refused to reassign a different judge to the case.
