United States Ninth Circuit

An award of attorney's fees for defendants under 42 U.S.C. section 1988, following dismissal of plaintiff's civil rights suit involving a custody dispute, is affirmed in part and vacated in part where such fees may not be awarded to a pro se attorney-defendant, or to defendants dismissed on Younger abstention or Rooker-Feldman grounds. However, state defendants dismissed on the basis of the Eleventh Amendment were entitled to recover attorneys' fees.

Appellate Information

• Argued 06/05/2006
• Decided 07/28/2006
• Published 07/28/2006

Judges

• SCHWARZER, Senior District Judge., Before SIDNEY R. THOMAS and RONALD M. GOULD, Circuit Judges, and WILLIAM W SCHWARZER, Senior District Judge.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Patricia J. Barry, Los Angeles, CA, for the appellants.


• For Appellees:
  
• Robert E. Drescher, Newhall, CA, for appellee Drescher., Anita Susan Brenner, Law Offices of Torres & Brenner, Pasadena, CA, for appellee Hutchinson., Bill Lockyer, Attorney General of the State of California, and Sandra J. Barrientos, Deputy Attorney General, Los Angeles, CA, for appellees Zakon, Farrell, Kehiayan, MacLaughlin, Skeba and California Department of Justice.