Lawyer Paid A Buck And A Half For Legal Victory

[dales]

NY lawyer gets paid $1.50 for civil rights victory

AP

Last Updated: 12:07 PM, December 3, 2011

Posted: 12:07 PM, December 3, 2011


Attorney Harrison Williams should have made $75,000 for work he did on behalf of a prisoner who filed a lawsuit. Instead, an appeals court ruled, he earned $1.50.

The prisoner, who claimed he had his religious rights violated when his dreadlocks were touched, was awarded one dollar.

Williams said the Nov. 15 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan may discourage lawyers from representing the civil rights claims of prisoners. The appeals court said Congress limited attorney fees to 150 percent of a jury award when it passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act in 1997, though it conceded the description in the law was "not a model of clarity."

"A lot of attorneys were probably unhappy when they saw that decision," Williams said. "You have to consider there aren't many of these cases economically you can afford to take on."

Richard J. Cardinale, a Brooklyn lawyer who sometimes represents prisoners, said he was not surprised by the ruling.

"The rationale is that a lot of these cases are dubious and that prisoners need to be discouraged from bringing these cases and lawyers need to be discouraged too," he said. "It discourages me from taking small cases."

It's unlikely the law will change, Cardinale said.

"There's no constituency for prisoners or for people who represent prisoners. I have no hope," he said.

This ruling will absolutely discourage lawyers from taking on such cases and "clients as unpopular as prisoners," said John Boston, director of the Prisoner's Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society of New York.

"The Prison Litigation Reform Act was supposedly enacted to help curb frivolous litigation by prisoners. However, some of its major provisions are not restricted to frivolous cases, but apply equally, or worse, to meritorious cases," he said.

Boston noted that the Shepherd decision cited a 2006 case from an appeals court in Chicago. That ruling limited payment to a lawyer to $1.50 after his prisoner client was awarded $1 in a case.

Williams, a 77-year-old partner at Green & Seifter, estimates the firm spent about $75,000 in billable hours working on the claim by prisoner Eon Shepherd. The jury was only required to determine if Shepherd's rights were violated and the amount of the award. It did not elaborate on its finding.

The jury's minuscule financial award was not unusual. Juries in other cases, often unrelated to prisoners, have made a token payment in a case where vindication of the plaintiff's assertion of a right seemed more important than a cash award.

Williams said Shepherd seemed pleased afterward. "He said, 'You know what, I'm really satisfied because I feel like I've been vindicated.'"

Shepherd said his civil rights were violated on July 4, 2001, while he was incarcerated in New York's maximum-security Elmira Correctional Facility. He claimed that two guards had touched his "sacred" dreadlocks and "slightly tore" them. As the appeals court explained it, one guard held a metal detector over Shepherd's head while the other manually searched his hair as Shepherd complained that touching his dreadlocks without his permission violated his Rastafarian beliefs.

Shepherd was serving a life sentence for robbery and possession of stolen property and has since been moved to another facility.

Williams said the case required several hour-long rides to the prison to meet with Shepherd and the daily drive to federal court in Utica for the weeklong trial that ended with the jury agreeing that guards violated Williams' right to the free exercise of his religion.

"To be sure, capping attorney's fees for a $1 monetary award at $1.50 is the practical equivalent of no fee award at all," the appeals court wrote. "But that is not a sufficient reason to deny the statutory language its plain meaning, which permits no exception for minimal or nominal monetary judgments."

Williams had actually requested nearly $100,000 in attorney fees but the appeals court said he would have qualified for less than half that amount if the law did not restrict his award to $1.50, which actually was reduced to $1.40 because 10 percent of the dollar paid to Shepherd was required to come from attorney fees.

The fee will provide enough quarters to pay his parking at a meter outside his office for a few hours, Williams said.

"We actually haven't been paid $1.50 yet but I'm not looking for it," he said. Williams noted that the fee has become a source of humor in his office, such as the accusation that he wasn't meeting his billable hours quota.

As for his client, Williams had nothing but praise, saying that Shepherd reacted well from the moment the verdict came in.

"He thanked me and said, 'You did a great job and I'm satisfied.' I was really disappointed. I thought he probably should have been given some amount of money and maybe there would be a message to the correction officers not to do this again," he said.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/lawy ... z1fWfgsF1R

[Lord Jim]

Given the facts of the case, the award sounds grossly excessive...

Hopefully it will be reduced on appeal.

[Jarlaxle]

They should have simply shaved his head.

[Scooter]

It's easy to use a ridiculous case to make a point, but there are conceivably lots of cases that could arise in prison that might not lend themselves to substantial monetary damages, but which deserve to be resolved in a prisoner's favour. If a prisoner is being denied his or her mail, or visitors, or access to counsel, none of that may be seen as necessitating a large financial award, but there needs to be a means of restoring the prisoner's rights. How will that happen if his/her lawyer's fees are based solely on the monetary value of a judgment?

[Andrew D]

It's easy to use a ridiculous case to make a point, but there are conceivably lots of cases that could arise in prison that might not lend themselves to substantial monetary damages, but which deserve to be resolved in a prisoner's favour. If a prisoner is being denied his or her mail, or visitors, or access to counsel, none of that may be seen as necessitating a large financial award, but there needs to be a means of restoring the prisoner's rights. How will that happen if his/her lawyer's fees are based solely on the monetary value of a judgment?

In such a case, under the existing law in the US Courts of Appeals, the statutory limit would be inapplicable:

However, if non-monetary relief is ordered (whether with or without a monetary award), the attorney's fees cap in 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(2) does not apply. See Walker v. Bain, 257 F.3d 660, 667 n. 2 (6th Cir.2001); Boivin v. Black, 225 F.3d 36, 41 n. 4 (1st Cir.2000).

(Foulk v. Charrier, 262 F.3d 687, 703 n.17 (8th Cir. 2001).)*

I wonder whether any non-monetary relief was ever sought in this case. If the plaintiff -- more precisely, the plaintiff's attorney -- had sought and obtained some sort of injunctive relief, the cap on attorney's fees would evidently have been rendered irrelevant.

Of course, there is another solution, entirely just and reasonable: If the trier of fact determines that the any of the prisoner's rights has been violated so as to support an award even of nominal damages, then the court is required to enter a judgment for actual damages of at least $100,000 for each such violation.

-------------------------

* In this case -- Shepherd v. Goord, ___ F.3d ___, 2011 WL 5528587 (2d Cir. 2011) -- the court acknowledged that in previous cases involving non-monetary relief, it had not applied the 150% cap. But it also stated that because no non-monetary relief had been awarded in this case, it did not need to consider whether the 150% cap would apply in a case involving non-monetary relief. That is apparently because its previous non-monetary-relief cases did not involve claims that the 150% cap should apply. But as far as I have seen, the US Courts of Appeals which have addressed the question are unanimous: The 150% cap does not apply to cases in which non-monetary relief is awarded, regardless of whether monetary relief is also awarded.

[dgs49]

I recall a book - QB VII - which ended with a similar verdict.

There is a lot of "funny stuff" that goes on with reimbursement of attorneys' fees, but the judges and the attorneys for the parties are often drinking buddies, and most legislators are attorneys, so it is not perceived as a problem worth resolving.

Back when I was reading the law about "prisoners' rights" I had the impression that there were sufficient protections for prisoners under federal law. Civil Rights Act of 1968, I believe it was. But the occasional abuse stories (some of which are currently being played out in Western Pennsylvania) are still shocking.

[Sue U]

There is a lot of "funny stuff" that goes on with reimbursement of attorneys' fees, but the judges and the attorneys for the parties are often drinking buddies,

Gleaned from your vast experience with the civil justice system and making fee applications?

[loCAtek]

"It's not the dread upon your head, but the love inna your heart, that mek ya Rastaman" (Sugar Minott)

As for his client, Williams had nothing but praise, saying that Shepherd reacted well from the moment the verdict came in.

Of course, I and I wouldn't want the corrupt Western currency of Babylon, to sully his Jah Luv "Way of Life".