United States Ninth Circuit

The district court's attorneys' fee award to plaintiffs arising from the settlement of numerous civil rights lawsuits against the defendant-city, its police department, and several local government officials is vacated and remanded, where: 1) in determining a reasonable fee award, a court must compute the fee award using an hourly rate that is based on the prevailing market rates in the relevant community; 2) when a district court reduces either the number of hours or the lodestar by a certain percentage greater than 10%, it must provide a clear and concise explanation for why it chose the specific percentage to apply; 3) it is not per se unreasonable for the prevailing party in a civil rights case to be awarded an amount of attorneys' fees that exceeds the amount of money recovered by his or her client; and 4) the district court did not apply these principles when determining the amount of plaintiffs' attorneys' fee award.

Appellate Information

• Decided 09/09/2013
• Published 09/09/2013

Judges

• SMITH

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel