Lee v. District of Columbia ( 2018 )

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
_________________________________________
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JUANISHIA LEE, )
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Plaintiff, )
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v. ) Case No. 15-cv-01802 (APM)
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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, )
)
Defendant. )
_________________________________________ )
MEMORANDUM OPINION
I.
This matter is before the court on Plaintiff Juanishia Lee’s Second Motion for Attorneys’
Fees under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”). This court previously
granted in part and denied in part Plaintiff’s initial motion for attorneys’ fees and awarded Plaintiff
$77,616.50 in attorneys’ fees and costs for her counsel’s successful representation of her minor
child, J.K., during administrative proceedings and in the instant litigation. See generally Lee v.
District of Columbia, No. 15-cv-1802, 2018 WL 400754 (D.D.C. Jan. 12, 2018). In her Second
Motion, Plaintiff seeks an award of “fees-on-fees,” i.e., the attorneys’ fees she incurred in litigating
her initial fees petition.
Plaintiff contends that she is entitled to $19,884.83 in fees-on-fees. In particular, Plaintiff
seeks reimbursement at 75% of the USAO Matrix hourly rate, which this court applied in
calculating her fees award associated with the underlying merits litigation. Defendant District of
Columbia does not contest the number of hours spent by Plaintiff’s counsel, but does oppose
Plaintiff’s proposed hourly rates. Defendant asserts that the court should only award Plaintiff fees
at 50% of the USAO Matrix rates applicable to her counsel at the time the services were performed.
Thus, according to Defendant, Plaintiff is entitled to no more than $8,790.70 in fees-on-fees. 1
After considering the parties’ submissions and the relevant law, the court grants in part and
denies in part Plaintiff’s Second Motion for Attorneys’ Fees, and awards Plaintiff $19,361.63 in
fees-on-fees.
II.
Under the IDEA, a “court, in its discretion, may award reasonable attorneys’ fees as part
of the costs . . . to a prevailing party who is the parent of a child with a disability.” 20 U.S.C.
§ 1415(i)(3)(B)(i)(I). As relevant here, the IDEA also allows “[p]arties who prevail at the
administrative level [to] recover fees-on-fees . . . for time reasonably devoted to obtaining
attorney’s fees.” McNeil v. District of Columbia, 233 F. Supp. 3d 150, 153 (D.D.C. 2017)
(alterations in original) (emphasis added) (quoting Kaseman v. District of Columbia, 444 F.3d 637,
640 (D.C. Cir. 2006)); see also Jones v. District of Columbia, 153 F. Supp. 3d 114, 118 (D.D.C.
2015) (“The availability of reasonable attorneys’ fees applies to fees incurred in IDEA litigation
both before administrative agencies and in federal court, as well as to fees incurred to vindicate a
plaintiff’s right to fees.”).
In its previous decision granting in part Plaintiff’s initial motion for attorneys’ fees and
costs, this court outlined the relevant legal standards governing motions for attorneys’ fees brought
1
Defendant’s opposition leaves to the imagination how it arrived at this calculation. See generally Def.’s Opp’n to
Pl.’s Mot. for Attorney’s Fees & Costs, ECF No. 30 [hereinafter Def.’s Opp’n]. Applying “50% of the USAO Matrix
rate[s] applicable . . . [at] the time the services were performed,” as the District requests, see id. at 3, would yield a
total award that exceeds the $8,790.70 award proposed by the District. See generally Pl.’s Second Motion for
Attorneys’ Fees, ECF No. 29, Ex., Combined Atty Fee Invoice, ECF No. 29-3; USAO Attorney’s Fees Matrix —
2015–2018, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/file/796471/download (last visited Apr. 6, 2018);
Def.’s Opp’n at 2 n.1 (citing the current USAO Matrix). The District’s proposed award is therefore perplexing, given
that the District does not dispute the number of hours spent by Plaintiff’s counsel. See generally Def.’s Opp’n. Quite
simply, the District’s math doesn’t add up. Thus, the court only addresses the District’s principal argument regarding
the 50% rates and ignores its proposed calculation, which finds no support in the record evidence.
2
pursuant to the IDEA’s fee-shifting provision, see generally Lee, 2018 WL 400754, and the court
need not repeat those standards in detail here. As noted above, the parties dispute the “reasonable
hourly rate” that should be used to calculate Plaintiff’s award of attorneys’ fees, which “turns on
three sub-elements: (1) ‘the attorney[’s] billing practices,’ (2) ‘the attorney[’s] skill, experience,
and reputation’ and (3) ‘the prevailing market rates in the relevant community.’” Reed v. District
of Columbia, 843 F.3d 517, 521 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (quoting Eley v. District of Columbia, 793 F.3d
97, 100 (D.C. Cir. 2015)).
III.
In this case, Plaintiff seeks an award of fees-on-fees for the services of three lawyers:
Carolyn Houck, Charles Moran, and Stevie Nabors. Pl.’s Reply to Def.’s Opp’n to Pl.’s Second
Mot. for Attorneys’ Fees, ECF No. 31 [hereinafter Pl.’s Reply], Ex., Updated Statement of
Account, ECF No. 31-1 [hereinafter Updated Invoice]. Houck is a solo practitioner in
St. Michaels, Maryland, and Moran and Nabors are with the law firm of Moran & Associates
located in Washington, D.C. Lee, 2018 WL 400754, at *3. Plaintiff also seeks an award for the
services of Joseph Golinker, a law clerk at Moran & Associates. See Pl.’s Second Mot. for
Attorneys’ Fees, ECF No. 29 [hereinafter Pl.’s 2d Mot.], Ex., Decl. of Joseph Golinker, ECF No.
29-4 [hereinafter Golinker Decl.]. The court already addressed the evidence supporting these
attorneys’ billing practices, as well as their skill, experience, and reputation, in its previous
decision. 2 See generally Lee, 2018 WL 400754, at *5–6. Thus, only the last, and perhaps most
important, sub-element is at issue here—the prevailing market rate in the relevant community.
2
The court did not address the billing practices of Moran & Associates with respect to law clerks, or the skill,
experience, or reputation of Golinker in its previous decision. See generally Lee, 2018 WL 400754, at *5–6. Golinker
worked for Moran & Associates as an intern during law school and continued on as a law clerk after graduating.
Golinker Decl. ¶ 6. He attests that he has five years of “combined experience in special education teaching, law, and
advocacy,” id. ¶ 7, and that while not barred in the District of Columbia, he is a member of the New Mexico bar, id.
¶ 8. As with Moran and Nabors, Golinker states that Moran & Associates “customarily” bills his time at USAO matrix
paralegal rates, id. ¶ 9, but offers no more specifics about the firm’s billing practices. Defendant raises no objection
3
According to Plaintiff, the prevailing market rates for the underlying merits litigation and
fees-on-fees are the same in the IDEA context. See Pl.’s 2d Mot., Pl.’s Mem. of Points &
Authorities in Supp. of Pl.’s Second Mot. for Attorneys’ Fees, ECF No. 29-1 [hereinafter Pl.’s
Mem.], at 1–2. Thus, because the court applied 75% of the USAO Matrix rates to calculate the
attorneys’ fees associated with work performed in the underlying litigation, Plaintiff asks the court
to apply the same rates to calculate her fees-on-fees. See id. Defendant, on the other hand, urges
the court to award Plaintiff “fees at 50% of the USAO Matrix rate applicable to Plaintiff’s
attorney[s’] years of practice for the time the services were performed.” Def.’s Opp’n to Pl.’s Mot.
for Attorney’s Fees & Costs, ECF No. 30 [hereinafter Def.’s Opp’n], at 3. In the main, Defendant
asserts that the prevailing market rate for fees-on-fees is only 50% of the USAO Matrix rate,
because “litigation to obtain fees related to substantive IDEA actions is straightforward” and
“involv[es] no complicated issues or extensive preparation.” Id. at 2. The court disagrees with
Defendant.
This court recently rejected the same argument made by the District here in James v.
District of Columbia, No. 14-cv-2147, 2018 WL 1461899 (D.D.C. Mar. 23, 2018). In James, the
court noted that while the D.C. Circuit “‘has yet to determine whether all aspects of IDEA litigation
should be treated as a unified whole, subject to the same prevailing market rate,’ . . . courts in this
jurisdiction have concluded that ‘a successful fee applicant seeking fees-on-fees [need not]
demonstrate anew the reasonableness of her proposed rate for time expended in her successful fee
application.’” Id. at *11 (second alteration in original) (first quoting Reed, 843 F.3d at 526; then
to Golinker specifically; instead, Defendant simply argues that 50% of the USAO Matrix rates at the time the services
were performed should apply across the board, including to Golinker. See Def.’s Opp’n.
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quoting McNeil, 233 F. Supp. 3d at 154). 3 In declining to apply the lower 50% rate to fees-on-
fees, the court found all of the cases cited by the District to be unpersuasive, as they were decided
before the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Reed. Id.; see also Reed, 843 F.3d at 527 (holding that the
district court “did not abuse its discretion in applying the same rate for fees for the administrative
proceedings and fees-on-fees in light of [the plaintiffs’] failure to submit evidence of any
meaningful difference between these two types of litigation”). The court in James also reasoned
that the record evidence failed to support “any meaningful difference in the market rate for
substantive work as opposed to fees-on-fees,” and if anything, suggested that “there [wa]s no
[such] difference.” James, 2018 WL 1461899, at *11. The same is true in this case. Thus, as in
James, the court will not require Plaintiff to “demonstrate anew” the reasonableness of the rate she
proposes. Instead, the court will apply the same prevailing market rate (75% of the USAO Matrix
rate) to calculate Plaintiff’s fees-on-fees. “To hold otherwise would ‘increase the burden on the
courts and unnecessarily protract the litigation without advancing the goals of IDEA.’” Id. at *12
(quoting McNeil, 233 F. Supp. 3d at 155).
The court’s holding, however, is subject to one caveat. In her motion, Plaintiff states that
“[t]he Court has already determined the appropriate rate for [her] counsel is 75% of the matrix
rates, and [she] does not seek an adjustment from that determination for her fees on fees.” Pl.’s
Mem. at 1–2. A careful examination of Plaintiff’s counsel’s invoice, however, reveals that her
counsel billed at 75% of the current USAO Matrix rates for the 2017–2018 year, and not 75% of
the USAO Matrix rates that this court applied in its previous decision. Compare Updated Invoice;
Updated USAO Matrix, with Lee, 2018 WL 400754, at *3, *8 (applying rates for the 2015–2016
3
To be sure, the D.C. Circuit has treated “different aspects of IDEA litigation as one proceeding, holding that the fee
cap provision ‘encompasses both administrative proceedings and subsequent fee requests.’” Shaw v. District of
Columbia, 253 F. Supp. 3d 267, 268 (D.D.C. 2017) (quoting Kaseman, 444 F.3d at 643); accord Reed, 843 F.3d at
526–27 (same).
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year). Yet Plaintiff has offered no reason why the court should apply only the current USAO
Matrix rates to the entirety of the fees petition work. The court therefore declines to do so here.
Instead, the court will only apply the USAO Matrix rates applicable at the time the underlying fees
petition work was performed. See Def.’s Opp’n at 3. Because some of the services were performed
between June 1, 2016, and May 31, 2017, see Updated Invoice; Updated USAO Matrix (noting
that the hourly rates for each year are measured from June 1st to May 31st), the court will apply
75% of the USAO Matrix rates for the 2016–2017 year to calculate the fees award as to those
services.
Finally, to the extent Defendant argues that the court should apply its proposed 50% of the
USAO Matrix rates “to account for [Plaintiff’s] limited success” in litigating her initial fees
petition, see Def.’s Opp’n at 3 (citing Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 436–37 (1983)), the
court rejects that argument in this case. True, in Hensley, the Supreme Court explained that if a
prevailing party “achieve[s] only partial or limited success,” then the district court has discretion
to exercise its equitable judgment to “identify specific hours that should be eliminated, or . . .
simply reduce the award to account for limited success.” 461 U.S. at 434, 436–37. And, “[c]ourts
in this District have concluded that awards of ‘fees on fees’ should be reduced to exclude the
amount of time spent unsuccessfully defending fee requests denied by the court.” Am. Immigration
Council v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 82 F. Supp. 3d 396, 413 (D.D.C. 2015). But in this case,
Defendant has wholly failed to explain why it would be appropriate for the court to exercise its
equitable discretion to reduce Plaintiff’s fees award to account for any “limited success.”
Indeed, other than a summary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Hensley, Defendant
offers no argument whatsoever regarding the degree of Plaintiff’s success in litigating her initial
fees petition. See Def.’s Opp’n at 2–3. For example, Defendant offers no reason to support its
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IV.
For the foregoing reasons, the court grants in part and denies in part Plaintiff’s Second
Motion for Attorneys’ Fees and awards $19,361.63 in attorneys’ fees under the IDEA. A separate
Order accompanies this Memorandum Opinion.
Dated: April 6, 2018 Amit P. Mehta
United States District Judge
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