Attorney’s Fees – Prevailing Prisoners

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United States Supreme Court

Case Name: Murphy v. Smith, et al.

Case No.: 16-1067

Focus: Attorney’s Fees – Prevailing Prisoners

This is a case about how much prevailing prisoners must pay their lawyers. When a prisoner wins a civil rights suit and the district court awards fees to the prisoner’s attorney, a federal statute says that “a portion of the [prisoner’s] judgment (not to exceed 25 percent) shall be applied to satisfy the amount of attorney’s fees awarded against the defendant. If the award of attorney’s fees is not greater than 150 percent of the judgment, the excess shall be paid by the defendant.” 42 U. S. C. §1997e(d)(2). Whatever else you might make of this, the first sentence pretty clearly tells us that the prisoner has to pay some part of the attorney’s fee award before financial responsibility shifts to the defendant. But how much is enough? Does the first sentence allow the district court discretion to take any amount it wishes from the plaintiff ’s judgment to pay the attorney, from 25% down to a penny? Or does the first sentence instead mean that the court must pay the attorney’s entire fee award from the plaintiff’s judgment until it reaches the 25% cap and only then turn to the defendant?

To avoid reading §1997e(d)(2) as affording entirely rudderless discretion, Mr. Murphy contends that district courts should apportion fees in proportion to the defendant’s culpability. When a defendant has acted egregiously, he says, the court should lower the plaintiff ’s responsibility for the fee award and increase the defendant’s—even if that means applying only a “nominal” amount of the plaintiff ’s judgment toward the fee. But precisely none of this appears in §1997e(d)(2) or, for that matter, enjoys any analogue in §1988’s lodestar analysis or even the old 12- factor approach. Whatever you might have to say about Mr. Murphy’s culpability formula as a matter of policy, it has no roots in the law. Nor is it clear, for what it’s worth, that the culpability approach would even help him. The district court never cited the defendants’ culpability (or any other reason) to justify taking only 10% rather than 25% from Mr. Murphy’s judgment. And it’s tough to see what the choice of 10% might have had to do with the defendant’s culpability in this case. The district court actually remitted the jury’s punitive damages award— suggesting that, if anything, the defendants’ culpability had been already amply addressed. We think the interpretation the court of appeals adopted prevails. In cases governed by §1997e(d), we hold that district courts must apply as much of the judgment as necessary, up to 25%, to satisfy an award of attorney’s fees.

Affirmed

Dissenting:

Concurring:

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.