Quaratino v. Tiffany & Co.

No. 97-7096 (2d Cir. Jan. 26, 1999) ; Clearinghouse Number: 52269

Description

Second Circuit Rejects "Billing Judgment" Approach in Awarding Civil Rights Plaintiff Fees Proportionate to Her Final Recovery

Abstract

Reversing, the Second Circuit held that the district court erred in failing to award plaintiffs the lodestar amount in attorney fees in this employment discrimination case. Plaintiff employee had alleged that defendant employer discriminated against her in violation of Title VII and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(k). She later added a retaliation claim after she was passed over for promotion. The jury rejected plaintiff’s pregnancy discrimination claim but awarded plaintiff $158,145 in compensatory and punitive damages on her retaliation claim. Plaintiff subsequently sought attorney fees. The district court declined to award its calculated lodestar amount of $124,645 and instead awarded fees of one-half of plaintiff’s recovery at trial. On appeal, plaintiff argued that the district court’s novel "billing judgment" approach was not supported by law. Under the district court’s approach, an attorney’s requested fee would be judged reasonable if it were rationally related to the monetary recovery that the attorney could have expected ex ante. Noting that Congress enacted fee shifting in civil rights cases precisely because the expected monetary recovery in many cases was too small to attract effective legal representation, the court of appeals held that the district court’s approach conflicted with the legislative intent and rationale of the fee-shifting statute by relinking the effectiveness of a civil rights plaintiff’s legal representation solely to the dollar value of her claim. The district court’s approach was not saved by its proposed exception, which would allow fees out of line with monetary recovery in cases involving a new important legal principle in civil rights. The court found that the public interest in civil rights enforcement was not limited to those cases that "push[ed] the legal envelope" and was perhaps most meaningfully served by day-to-day enforcement, which secured compliance and deterred future violations.

Additional Information

Docket Date
1999-01-26 00:00:00+00:00

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