LaPlante v. Pepe

307 F.Supp.2d 219

Daniel LaPLANTE, Plaintiff, v. Superintendent Peter PEPE Jr., Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Correction, et al., Defendants.

No. 01-10186-NG.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

January 29, 2004.

Marc J. Goldstein, Palmer & Dodge, LLP, Boston, MA, George E. Olson, Palmer & Dodge, LLP, Boston, MA, for Daniel LaPlante.

William D. Saltzman, Department of Correction, Legal Division, Boston, MA, for Beverly F. Veglas, Don Stewart, Mark Powers, Peter Pepe, Sherry Elliott, Defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER RE: ATTORNEYS' FEES

GERTNER, District Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

Daniel LaPlante ("LaPlante"), a state prisoner, brought this action pro se pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and 28 U.S.C. § 1331, alleging that the defendant prison officials had interfered with his right of access to the courts. He claimed that he did not have physical access to the M.C.I. — Cedar Junction Law Library, and that he could only request legal materials by precise citation for the delivery of copies to his cell.

In the summer of 2001, this Court solicited counsel for LaPlante. The law firm of Palmer & Dodge agreed to represent LaPlante, pro bono, for which the Court is grateful. Counsel immediately filed an amended complaint, and importantly, added a claim to enforce a settlement agreement entered in a previous case, LaPlante v. Maloney, 96-11116-RCL (D.Mass) August 18, 1998 ("LaPlante I"). Counsel also named additional defendants.

On January 30, 2003, the Court granted plaintiff's motion for summary judgment, and ordered:

1. Defendants have infringed Mr. LaPlante's constitutional right of access to the courts and have acted with deliberate and reckless indifference to his federally protected rights.

2. In the absence of proven or quantifiable monetary damages, Plaintiff is entitled to nominal damages of $21 (one dollar for each month deprivation of legal materials access, August 2000 — April 2002) from the individual defendants sued in their individual capacities.

3. Defendants are permanently enjoined from infringing Mr. LaPlante's constitutional right of access to the courts.

4. Defendants are permanently enjoined from violating the terms of the LaPlante I Settlement Agreement.

5. Plaintiff is the "prevailing party" in this action in the meaning of 42 U.S.C. § 1988.

6. Plaintiff's counsel is entitled to reasonable attorneys' fees and costs under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 and under the express terms of the LaPlante I Settlement Agreement.¹

In effect, it was a complete victory for the plaintiff.²

Pursuant to my order, plaintiff's counsel applied for attorneys' fees. The amount requested is One Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand, Eighty-Five And 83/100 ($125,085.83) Dollars. To the defendants, the application is "grossly excessive," for a "straight-forward access-to-court case." In short, they add, "[t]he case ... was over-litigated and over-billed."

In the light of the size of the application, and defendants' response, it is worth making a few observations at the outset, before proceeding with the more concrete analysis of plaintiff's application.

First, the defendants' position is breathtaking for its disingenuousness, to put it mildly. Now they imply that the issue raised by the complaint is a very simple one, stemming entirely from the LaPlante I Settlement Agreement.³ Now they imply that the issues were straightforward: Did the defendants breach the LaPlante I Settlement Agreement or did they not? Now they suggest that if the plaintiff had moved for preliminary injunctive relief, at the outset, the Court would have granted it and the case would have been substantially reduced in size.

But defendants sang an entirely different tune during the course of this litigation. They refused to concede a violation, even when it was apparent in the face of a crystal clear settlement agreement from over two years ago. They refused to settle the case, even when plaintiff's counsel had apparently made overtures along those lines. Instead, they raised argument, after argument which were the prototypical "red herrings." If the case was over-litigated by any party it was the defendants. The plaintiff had no choice but to respond.

As I noted in my January 31, 2003, Memorandum,

The reprise of defendants' unconstitutional behavior is very disturbing, and their position in this litigation can only be described as obtuse. Essentially, defendants claim that if Mr. LaPlante wanted access to the law library, he had merely to agree to a `general population' security classification. They contend that Mr. LaPlante was trying to use law library access to `manipulate' his housing placement.

To the extent defendants' arguments are comprehensible at all, they are completely unconvincing. There was absolutely no basis for the denial of the right of access to legal materials just because LaPlante was in protective custody and not housed in general population. The constitutional right of access to legal materials is not limited to a particular housing or security arrangement. In any event, I concluded that the unconstitutional treatment of a prisoner in one site, protective custody, is never excused just because the prisoner can avoid the treatment by transferring to a site where the conditions apparently meet constitutional requirements, namely the general population. And even if the defendants thought that LaPlante was improperly claiming an entitlement to protective custody, they had a ready solution; they retained discretion to classify LaPlante over his objection.

Although the time spent by plaintiff's counsel was unquestionably substantial, with some exceptions noted below, it was entirely justified by the defendants'"over-litigated" motions and memoranda. It was a straightforward case and as a signatory of a settlement agreement with LaPlante, which covered these precise issues, defendants should have realized it long before the attorneys' fees petition.⁴

Second, it is true that Palmer and Dodge concluded that they needed four lawyers to staff this case — a senior associate, a mid-level associate, and a junior associate, who were supervised by a partner — which, on the surface, seems excessive. But the lawyers at Palmer and Dodge were not experienced in § 1983 litigation in general, and prison litigation in particular. As I describe below, they reasonably believed that they had to research every one of the defendants' diversionary tactics.

Palmer and Dodge would have been entirely remiss if they had not researched issues that litigators more experienced in this area would not have had to research, considered strategies that perhaps litigators more experienced in this area would have instantly rejected. In addition, staffing the case with junior lawyers made sense; had Palmer and Dodge's senior members done the research and drafting, the cost would have been even higher to the losing parties, not to mention the firm. Thus, the firm did what it was entitled to do — staff the case with lawyers whose billing rates were low and use them to "catch up" on prison law, and § 1983 issues. In submitting their bill for attorneys' fees, the firm attempted to pare it down as much as it could. Moreover, they did this while taking the risk that not a penny of their time would be compensated.⁵

Due to plaintiff's counsel's inexperience in civil rights law the problem of their having to do more work than, say, a civil rights law firm would have, is simply unavoidable. The Court cast about widely to find someone, not only to represent LaPlante, but candidly, to assist the Court in resolving the case. Typically, the litigation is more efficient and more cost-effective when there are competent counsel on both sides than when one party litigates without counsel. In the vast majority of cases, the Court cannot find counsel willing to represent pro se civil rights litigants. Prisoner cases are particularly unpopular. In the instant case, lawyers with expertise in the field did not respond to the Court's request; Palmer and Dodge did. And that fact is particularly troubling because LaPlante's claims were meritorious. In awarding attorneys' fees, courts have long recognized that there may be instances in which the costs of representation may be higher where, for example, lower priced counsel is unavailable or not competent.⁶

Nevertheless, I am mindful that the defendants are a public entity and public officials, performing an essential job at a time of strained resources. It is for that reason that I have scrutinized this bill carefully, to make certain that each and every one of the legal standards have been met.

The end result however, is still a substantial award. I am confident that the responsibility for an award of this size should be borne by defendants who flagrantly violated a two-year-old agreement, and who were represented by counsel who determined to escalate and complicate what it now agrees was a very simple case, and not by the private law firm who appropriately represented the plaintiff, as they were asked to do.

II. LEGAL ANALYSIS

A. Appropriateness of Fee Award

The Civil Rights Attorneys Fees Awards Act of 1976 authorizes the district court to allow the prevailing party in any Civil Rights Act suit "a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs." 42 U.S.C. § 1988. A plaintiff prevails if he has succeeded on "`any significant issue in litigation which achieve[d] some of the benefit the parties sought in bringing suit.'" Texas State Teachers Ass'n. v. Garland Indep. Sch. Dist., 489 U.S. 782, 791-92, 109 S.Ct. 1486, 103 L.Ed.2d 866 (1989) (quoting Nadeau v. Helgemoe, 581 F.2d 275, 278-279 (1st Cir.1978)). The LaPlante settlement agreement expressly provided that plaintiff would be entitled to attorneys' fees and costs under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 if he were required to initiate any proceeding to enforce the agreement.

There is no question that plaintiff is the "prevailing party" here.

B. Framework for Analysis

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