Find Chapter 9: Settlement or Trial of the Class Action in The Federal Class Action Practice Manual - Internet Edition written by Timothy E.
A Express Causes of Action, Section 1. Elements of the Claim. Updated 2. 01. 3 by Robert P. Capistrano. The two principal statutes creating general causes of action for the enforcement of rights created by federal law are the Reconstruction Civil Rights Acts,1 particularly Section 1. Administrative Procedure Act.
Section 1. 98. 3 authorizes a wide variety of suits against state and local governments and officials for deprivations of federal rights under color of state law, while other Reconstruction statutes authorize more limited claims against private parties who violate federal rights. The Administrative Procedure Act authorizes a narrower variety of suits against federal officials and agencies. Section 1. 98. 3 litigation has vindicated constitutional and statutory rights in the context of health, welfare, education, housing, employment, and prison law in litigation against state, county, or municipal officials.
Course Schedule The mission of the Economic Development Division of Georgia Northwestern Technical College is to provide occupational training for skills development and workforce development for business, industry, and community organizations in Catoosa. The information contained in this manual is not intended to teach the law regarding child abuse and neglect proceedings in juvenile courts. It is designed to serve as a checklist and reference guide rather than as an authority on the law. This manual will provide.
The Administrative Procedure Act has vindicated similar rights by correcting federal agency action or by forcing specific federal agency action. A. Section 1. 98. The Reconstruction Civil Rights Acts, enacted during the 1. The most important of these statutes is Section 1. Section 1. 98. 3 creates no substantive rights. Rather, it creates a vehicle for enforcing existing federal rights.
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The statute provides in pertinent part: Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. The elements of a Section 1. Finding a Federal Right. By its terms, Section 1.
Constitutional provisions that are enforceable by a private party under Section 1. Fourteenth Amendment. In contrast to the relatively straightforward expression of individual . All other rights are . Ash,1. 4 the Supreme Court enunciated a four- part test to determine whether Congress intended to imply a right to sue directly under a federal statute.
In general, a plaintiff asserting the right is required to show that (1) membership in the class for whose benefit the statute was enacted, (2) evidence of Congress. In short, under this doctrine, the plaintiff must show that Congress intended to grant both a private right and a private remedy. In the years following Cort, the judiciary became less willing to find rights of action implied directly under a statute, and plaintiffs began turning to Section 1. Thiboutot,1. 6 decided five years after Cort, the Supreme Court held for the first time that Section 1. Seven years later, in Wright v. Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority,1.
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The Supreme Court stated: . As the Supreme Court became increasingly hostile to the use of Section 1. For this reason, one should understand the Court. Virginia Hospital Association. It asks whether (1) Congress intended the particular statutory provision to benefit the plaintiff, (2) the provision is so vague or amorphous as to make judicial enforcement difficult or impractical, and (3) the statute imposes a binding obligation on the government.
After these inquiries, a fourth arises: (4) did Congress create a comprehensive mechanism for enforcing the statute which implies that it intended to deny a private right of action? Each of these prongs emerged from a series of Supreme Court decisions, with the first element undergoing something of a metamorphosis as it rose in importance in comparison to the other prongs of the test. Indeed, resolution of this first inquiry.
Did Congress intend the law to so directly benefit the plaintiff, such that those in his or her place are the . As formulated by Wilder, even if a statute imposes binding obligations on the state which are capable of judicial enforcement, Section 1. Congress intended the law to directly benefit the plaintiff. However, this only begins the inquiry. The plaintiff must also point to evidence that Congress intended that he or she.
This made Section 1. Cort v. The erosion of this interpretation was first suggested in Blessing v. Blessing involved a mandate requiring states receiving federal child- welfare funds to . The Court held that the mandate was not . Indeed, a non- Section 1.
Alexander v. Sandoval, presaged the Court. Doe by placing great emphasis on the language used by Congress. It held instead that the statute was addressed more to the entity regulated than to the students benefited. The Court cited several factors suggesting that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act did not confer an enforceable right upon students. First, the Court stated, . University of Chicago, a non- Section 1. Cort v. Ash test to find a right of action implied under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act: There would be far less reason to infer a private remedy in favor of individual persons if Congress, instead of drafting .
Freestone, the Court found the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act provisions to have an . Therefore, the first question a prospective plaintiff must answer is whether he or she is the . Not surprisingly, government attorneys have argued with some success. Artist M., the Court found that the plaintiff could not enforce the requirement, found in the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, that a state make .
Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority, plaintiffs prevailed in a Section 1. Brooke Amendment, even though the statute nowhere defined the components of . The Court found that definitions found elsewhere in the statute provided a standard for judicial enforcement. A. 1. c. Does the statute create a binding obligation? In Pennhurst State School and Hospital v.
Halderman, the first decision to limit the use of Section 1. Supreme Court considered the ostensibly . The statutory language was held to be . Therefore, the third question a prospective plaintiff must consider is whether the statute sought to be enforced actually requires the state or local agency to do something.
A. 1. d. Does the statute contain a comprehensive enforcement mechanism? If the statute at issue passes muster under the prongs above, Section 1. In Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v. National Sea Clammers Association,5. Section 1. 98. 3 to enforce both the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act, by enjoining the dumping of waste in the Atlantic Ocean.
In addition to providing a limited right to sue to private parties, these statutes provided. The Supreme Court pointed to those measures as indicating Congress. Robinson,5. 3 a disabled child who had claimed that he was not receiving an appropriate free education in violation of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Equal Protection Clause, won his Education for All Handicapped Children Act claim. He thereafter pointed to his alternative Section 1. U. S. C. Abrams, the Court found that, absent an explicit or implied indication that the statutory remedy was meant to complement other available remedies, the Telecommunications Act of 1. As the Supreme Court subsequently explained in Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee,5.
In contrast, Title IX, at issue in Fitzgerald, had no similar enforcement scheme and a private right of action directly under the statute has been implied. Thus, in the absence of exhaustion or alternative remedial measures, the Court held that concurrent Title IX and. On the one hand, the Court noted that the . Does the enactment of a statute by Congress under its Spending Power undermine the enforceability of the statute under Section 1. Defendants have argued that legislation enacted under Congress.
Consequently, a state. Odom and Westside Mothers v.
Haveman. 6. 2In Westside Mothers v. Haveman, the later of the two decisions, the Sixth Circuit ruled that the obligations of the state under the Medicaid Act were more than a mere contract.
Kentucky Department of Education, which stated that, . To what degree can a federal regulation create rights enforceable under Section 1.
In Wright, the Supreme Court implied that a regulation implementing a rights- creating statute (defining . Virginia Hospital Association,6. This blunted the argument that the statute was too vague or ambiguous to be enforced. Drawing on these decisions and the somewhat analogous case of Golden State Transit Corporation v.
City of Los Angeles (Golden State II), it was generally believed that binding regulations could themselves create enforceable rights. Recent appellate court rulings, however, question this view, suggesting that the private enforceability of a particular regulation depends on (1) the extent to which the regulation directly implements congressional intent, and (2) whether Congress also intended the governing statute to create a . Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court ruled that . Such legislative regulations are given controlling weight unless they are arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to statute.
Sandoval, the Court considered whether, outside of the Section 1. Ash test,7. 5 the Supreme Court. On the one hand, the pre- Sandoval/Gonzaga decision in Loschiavo v. City of Dearborn,7.
Samuels v. District of Columbia,7. Section 1. 98. 3 in an expansive manner, holding that valid regulations were .
Citing Wright, the court in Loschiavo reasoned that because . James, the Eleventh Circuit found that Medicaid regulations could not create a right to non- emergency transportation absent an explicit provision in the governing statute. Similarly, in South Camden Citizens v.
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the Third Circuit relied on Sandoval to reject the private enforceability of Title VI disparate impact regulations under Section 1. The First Circuit adopted this view in Rolland v. Romney, although went.
Gutman. Court- awarded attorney fees are critical in preserving access to the courts for poor people. The risk of having to pay plaintiffs. Therefore, legal aid advocates. Prevailing Party Standard After Buckhannon. To qualify for a fee award under most federal fee- shifting statutes, a litigant must be a .
A prevailing party is . EEOC,8 the Supreme Court considered the circumstances under which the defendant was deemed to be a prevailing party. In that case, the defendant company prevailed in a Title VII sexual harassment case on grounds that did not reach the merits of the EEOC's claims. The Court held the defendant may nevertheless be a prevailing party . Congress must have intended that a defendant could recover fees expended in frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless litigation when the case is resolved in the defendant's favor, whether on the merits or not. Imposing an on- the- merits requirement for a defendant to obtain prevailing party status would undermine that congressional policy by blocking a whole category of defendants for whom Congress wished to make fee awards available.
The second question. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.
In Buckhannon, the Supreme Court held that voluntary change in behavior by a defendant caused by a pending lawsuit did not qualify the plaintiff as a prevailing party for fee purposes. After Buckhannon, whether a plaintiff who is victorious in a practical sense is a prevailing party for fee purposes depends roughly on how much judicial involvement was involved in the victory. At one end of the spectrum, winning a judgment obviously qualifies a plaintiff as a prevailing party in most cases. The major qualification is that the judgment must require .
The judgment may be for nominal relief, although in such cases a court may deny fees altogether to the prevailing plaintiff. At the other end of the spectrum, under Buckhannon, simply filing a lawsuit that prompts defendants to change illegal behavior voluntarily (i. The Buckhannon Court disapproved the catalyst theory of recovery because it permitted an award . Defendants are likely to claim that their voluntary changes in policy render the case moot.
As the Buckhannon Court noted, however, mootness is to be found only when . Even in pre- Buckhannon jurisprudence, winning an interlocutory order that merely kept a suit alive did not transform litigants into prevailing parties. Preliminary injunctions, however, are a different matter because, as with final judgments, they order defendants to act or to refrain from acting.
Most lower courts have held that a preliminary injunction based on a finding that the plaintiff is likely to prevail on the merits can qualify the plaintiff as a prevailing party. By contrast, where an injunction merely preserves the status quo without reaching the merits, the plaintiff's victory may lack sufficient .
An FOIA complainant has . Entitlement to Fees Under Major Fee- Shifting Statutes. Once a plaintiff demonstrates that she is a prevailing party, showing entitlement to fees.
Civil Rights Attorney Fees Awards Act and Other Statutes. A prevailing plaintiff . A lawsuit that redresses a state or local government violation of rights guaranteed by federal statute is a Section 1. Section 1. 98. 8 and may thus qualify for a fee award. State governments do not enjoy Eleventh Amendment immunity against Section 1. B. 2. Equal Access to Justice Act.
Under the EAJA a party who prevails in litigation against the federal government . To meet the substantial justification test, the government.
Once the district court grants or denies a motion, the court of appeals is required to use a deferential abuse- of- discretion standard on appeal. Another practical hurdle EAJA litigants may have to surmount is the Supreme Court's decision in Astrue v. Ratliff that attorney fees belong to the litigant rather than counsel and therefore are subject to offsets when the prevailing plaintiff owes money to the federal government.
When there is no preexisting debt, however, courts generally have honored retainer agreements assigning the right to plaintiff's counsel to collect attorney fees. C. Calculation of Reasonable Fees: The Lodestar Calculation. Under the leading case of Hensley v. Eckerhart, the amount of a statutory fee award is determined by the lodestar method: .
Reasonable Number of Hours. What constitutes .
Documentation Requirements. Courts and opposing counsel examine whether the hours are well documented.
Some courts permit attorneys to reconstruct hours. However, inadequate documentation may result in a reduced fee award.
Attorneys, paralegals, and law clerks should begin keeping contemporaneous time records as soon as they realize that a matter may become a case, erring on the side of overinclusiveness. They should record the date, the time spent to complete a task broken down into six- minute increments, and, most important, a sufficiently detailed description of what was done. As one court stated, records should give . Bundling several activities into one entry, which is known as. Overall Billing Judgment Decisions.
Hensley states that. Normally this will encompass all hours reasonably expended on the litigation . Compensable Phases of Litigation. A court may award fees for work on all phases of a lawsuit from prelitigation work,5.
There are some limits, however, on awards for prelitigation services. Compensable Activities. Space does not permit a discussion of which litigation activities are compensable and which are not.
When a fee opponent challenges a particular activity, such as attorney travel time, a good place to start researching is one of the fee treatises. Perhaps the most frequently occurring challenge is to time spent by co- counsel communicating with each other. The Supreme Court has held that district courts have discretion to include conferencing time in a fee award. No court, to our knowledge, has denied compensation altogether for conferences. A subsidiary issue in some cases is the number of hours spent on counsel communications. Plaintiffs may need to demonstrate to a district court, through copies of agendas or through lead counsel.
When counsel do so, some courts award fully compensatory fees even when large numbers of conferencing hours are at issue. C. 1. e. Compensation for Less than Complete Success. Fee opponents often seek reductions based on the argument that the plaintiffs were only partly successful.
Plaintiffs rarely win all conceivable relief while prevailing along the way at every stage on all legal theories advanced. Courts do not, however, require that level of success to award fully compensatory fees. Less than Complete Relief. Frequently plaintiffs win some, but not all, of the equitable relief prayed for, or relatively small amounts of money in damage cases. In neither event is a reduction in fees necessarily warranted. The Hensley Court deemed it insignificant that a prevailing plaintiff did not receive all the relief requested.
For example, a plaintiff who failed to recover damages but obtained injunctive relief, or vice versa, may recover a fee award based on all hours reasonably expended if the relief obtained justified that expenditure of attorney time. Lawsuits seeking only damages present different issues. The Supreme Court in Farrar v. Hobby held that if a plaintiff wins only nominal damages, a court .
Whether it does depends on factors such as the difference between the damage amounts sought and awarded, the significance of the legal issue on which the plaintiff prevailed, and whether the litigation vindicated a public purpose. Several circuit courts have adopted Justice O.
A prevailing plaintiff need not prevail at every stage in a suit to receive fully compensatory fees. As the Ninth Circuit recognized in refusing to reduce fees for time spent unsuccessfully defending against a writ of certiorari: . Neither does a plaintiff need to win every issue raised in the complaint. Rather, fees for time spent litigating an unsuccessful claim are denied only where that claim . Reasonable Hourly Rates. In Blum v. Stenson the Supreme Court held that Section 1. The Court rejected as inconsistent with the legislative history of Section 1.
C. 2. a. Market Rates and How to Prove Them. The Blum Court noted Congress. Frequently Occurring Hourly Rate Issues. Five frequently recurring issues concerning reasonable hourly rates follow: First, the parties may disagree on which city.
While this issue can cut both ways, it appears to occur most frequently when an out- of- town big- city lawyer wins in a jurisdiction where prevailing rates are relatively low. Generally the forum community. The Supreme Court has held, however, that . Noting that firms representing large institutional defendants such as governments and insurance companies charge low rates to keep repeat business, the courts have rejected these arguments. Fee opponents often argue that plaintiffs.
Some courts have accepted this argument. Most have rejected it for two reasons. First, small firms and legal aid programs do not have the same luxury as do big firms in choosing to throw armies of associates into the fray. More important, the reason experienced attorneys command higher hourly rates, the courts have realized, is that they are often much more efficient: . The Supreme Court, however, has held that courts should compensate paralegal and law clerk time at market rates if the prevailing practice in the relevant community was to bill that time separately.
C. 2. c. Equal Access to Justice Act Hourly Rate Issues. Under the EAJA attorney fees are limited to $1. Inflation Adjustment. Hourly rates may be adjusted to account for increases in the cost of living since March 1. Congress set the EAJA hourly rate limit at $1. Although an inflation increase is not automatic, in practice most courts award it, usually unopposed.
The adjusted hourly rate equals $1. CPI- U). 8. 9 Unlike with other fee statutes, courts must use historical rather than current rates in awarding EAJA fees because of sovereign immunity concerns.