Stanton v. Southern Berkshire R

• Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
• Decided: December 14, 1999
• Docket: 99-1050
• Status: Published

Opinion

USCA1 Opinion

                 United States Court of Appeals

                     For the First Circuit


No. 99-1050



                    JANET G. STANTON, ET AL.,



                     Plaintiffs, Appellants,



                                v.



       SOUTHERN BERKSHIRE REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT, ET AL.,



                      Defendants, Appellees.


APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT



                FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS



          [Hon. Michael A. Ponsor, U.S. District Judge]


Before



                     Selya, Circuit Judge,

                                

                 Coffin, Senior Circuit Judge,

                                

                  and Boudin, Circuit Judge. 


Alan Jay Rom with whom Law Office of Sherwin L. Kantrovitz,

P.C. was on brief for appellants. 

     Charles J. Ferris for appellees Town of Egremont and its Board

of Selectmen.

     John F. Rogers with whom Cain, Hibbard, Myers & Cook, PC was

on brief for appellees Town of Alford, Clyde S. Brown, Charles F.

Ketchen and Raymond E. Wilcox, in their capacity as Selectmen of

the Town of Alford.


December 14, 1999


BOUDIN, Circuit Judge.  This appeal, limited to the

narrow question of counsel fees, has its roots in events long ago. 

In 1953, four Massachusetts towns in the Southern Berkshire area of

the state formed a regional school district, and in 1954, a fifth

town joined.  The five towns are Sheffield, Monterey, Egremont, New

Marlborough and Alford.  The district, empowered to govern public

schools within the region, was formed pursuant to state law, see

1951 Mass Acts c. 638, and was approved by the voters in each town.

  At all times, the district has been governed by a ten

member committee with a fixed apportionment of seats among the

towns.  Sheffield has four seats, Egremont and New Marlborough have

two each, and Alford and Monterey have one each.  Every committee

member's vote is equally weighted, so Sheffield has 40 percent of

the voting power, even though its population has at times

represented close to half of the district's total population.  From

1954 until very recently, each town's members on the committee were

chosen by popular vote of the residents of that town.   

  In 1986, this court upheld a challenge to another,

similarly structured Massachusetts school district based on the

Supreme Court's one person, one vote jurisprudence.  See Kelleher

v. Southeastern Reg'l Vocational Technical High Sch. Dist., 806

F.2d 9, 10-13 (1st Cir. 1986).  The court held that the

substantial discrepancy in voter power as among the respective

towns was unlawful but could be cured in various ways, including

resort to district-wide, at-large elections; weighting committee

member votes according to the population that they represent;

keying the number of locally elected members from each town to

population; or eliminating direct popular elections and having

local officials from each town appoint district members.  See id.

at 13 n.17.

  A few months later, state officials advised all districts

of the Kelleher decision and urged them to examine their own

situations; even if popularly elected, a district's governance

structure might or might not conform, depending on the deviation

between each town's population and the voting power of its own

members on the district committee.  For whatever reason, the

Southern Berkshire district involved in our case did nothing to

alter its structure.  Then, in 1993, it solicited an opinion from

state officials and was told that its own district failed to comply

with Kelleher.  A subcommittee, consisting of representatives from

all five towns, was set up to consider reforms.

  For the next three years, the subcommittee considered

various schemes but failed to reach an agreement.  Sheffield wanted

a plan that would retain local election of committee members but

that would increase Sheffield's voting power on the district

committee to conform to Sheffield's population share.  The other

towns preferred either district wide, at-large voting (which would

increase Sheffield's power) or the appointment of the district

committee members by elected bodies in each town (which would moot

the equal protection issue)--both solutions that Sheffield opposed.

  Dissatisfied with the status quo, the Town of Sheffield

and a group of its residents (including members of the town's board

of selectmen) brought the present suit in 1996 against the district

and the other four towns.  The suit, brought in federal district

court under 42 U.S.C.  1983, sought a declaration that the present

scheme was unconstitutional and injunctive relief to prevent new

elections under the present regime and to require a new court-

approved structure for elections.  The complaint also sought

attorney's fees for the plaintiffs under 42 U.S.C.  1988.

  Sheffield quickly moved for and received partial summary

judgment from the district court declaring the existing scheme

unconstitutional.  The defendants did not dispute that the scheme

was unconstitutional but questioned the need for a declaration

since the parties had been working on that assumption in seeking to

negotiate a solution.  Just before this ruling, Egremont proposed

a compromise--that the present committee structure be retained but

that the legal infirmity be remedied by having a local elected

entity in each town select the town's committee members in place of

popular elections.  Sheffield rejected the proposal.

  In early 1998, the parties reached agreement without

further litigation, and the district court approved the settlement. 

The final scheme was that earlier urged by Egremont--retaining the

present committee structure and allocation of voting power but

eliminating direct popular election of the committee--with one

variation:  Egremont had initially proposed that local popularly

elected school boards select the committee members, while the final

scheme let the local board of selectmen choose the committee

members for the town.  Thus Sheffield retained its original four

seats and 40 percent of the voting power on the committee, but its

members were now chosen without popular election.

  Some might think this an odd triumph for equal

protection, possibly raising a doubt or two about the Supreme Court

jurisprudence underpinning our decision in Kelleher, cf. id. at 13

(Campbell, C.J., concurring), but that is not our concern.  Rather,

the present appeal grows out of the plaintiffs' post-settlement

request for attorney's fees under section 1988.  The district court

denied that request on the ground that Sheffield was not a

"prevailing party," an explicit condition of such an award under

the statute.  See 42 U.S.C.  1988(b) ("[T]he court, in its

discretion, may allow the prevailing party . . . a reasonable

attorney's fee as part of the costs . . . .").  It is this ruling

that Sheffield now seeks to overturn.

  The usual "American rule" is that parties bear their own

counsel fees, see Alyeska Pipeline Serv. Co. v. Wilderness Soc'y,

421 U.S. 240, 247 (1975), but Congress may provide otherwise. 

Congress has sometimes directed that a prevailing plaintiff "shall"

recover a reasonable attorney's fee, e.g., 15 U.S.C.  15(a)

(antitrust cases); by contrast, in section 1983 actions, Congress

has said that the court "may" make such an award to a prevailing

party "in its discretion."  But the Supreme Court has read "may" to

mean "must," save for rare cases in which "special circumstances"

would render an award unjust.  Blanchard v. Bergeron, 489 U.S. 87,

89 n.1 (1989); Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 429 (1983).

  Perhaps in compensation, the Supreme Court has construed

the term "prevailing party" in a more flexible fashion.  For

example, it has said that "a technical victory may be so

insignificant . . . as to be insufficient to support prevailing

party status."  Texas State Teacher's Ass'n v. Garland Indep. Sch.

Dist., 489 U.S. 782, 792 (1989).  More recently, it ruled that a

plaintiff who wins only nominal damages can "prevail" yet be

entitled to no fee at all.  Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103, 113-15

(1992).  And it has described the concept of "prevailing party" in

phrases so general as to leave a good deal of latitude.  E.g., id.

at 111-12 ("[A] plaintiff 'prevails' when actual relief on the

merits of his claim  materially alters the legal relationship

between the parties by modifying the defendant's behavior in a way

that directly benefits the plaintiff.").

  We have taken the Supreme Court's cases to mean that,

absent unusual circumstances, the plaintiff is to be awarded

attorney's fees in cases under section 1983 where it wins

significant practical relief favorable to its position.  E.g.,

Pearson v. Fair, 980 F.2d 37, 43-44 (1st Cir. 1992).  Our cases

have also recognized that a plaintiff may achieve such ends through

litigation, and deserve attorney's fees, even without a formal

victory; for example, the so-called "catalyst" theory might justify

an award where the defendant abandoned an unlawful practice after

the case was brought, as a direct result of the lawsuit, but

without the need for a decree.  See id. at 43-45.  Again, the

inquiry is a practical one.

  Because the test of "prevailing party" is both general

and practical, we have relied heavily on the informed judgment of

the district courts in applying it to the widely varying facts that

are presented.  So long as the legal rules are properly understood,

a district court's application of them to individual circumstances

is normally upheld, if there is no abuse of discretion.  See Paris

v. HUD, 988 F.2d 236, 238-39 (1st Cir. 1993); McDonald v. HHS, 884

F.2d 1468, 1473-74 (1st Cir. 1989).  This is one of many instances

in which reasonableness is the touchstone, reflecting the trial

court's greater familiarity with the details of the case and the

absence of any special need for de novo review.

  Against this background, we readily sustain the district

court's denial of attorney's fees.  Far from obtaining their basic

objective in this case--increased power on the committee--the

Sheffield plaintiffs got exactly the opposite solution:  their

votes on the committee remain four out of ten or 40 percent of the

whole.  True, popular election of members is gone; but this can

hardly be described as a victory "for" Sheffield since its own

earlier demand had been to retain popular election (while

increasing Sheffield's share of the voting power on the committee).

  Sheffield describes its law suit as a "catalyst" for the

change that occurred.  Cf. Pearson, 980 F.2d at 43.  Whether this

is so in fact could fairly be debated since Sheffield was offered

pretty much the same outcome soon after the lawsuit was commenced,

namely, the present committee structure and apportionment of votes

but a switch from popular election to appointment of committee

members.  Sheffield says that the earlier proposal would have had

elected school boards appoint the committee members and it wanted

at least to ensure the power of its selectmen to choose them; but

this choice has nothing to do with protecting the one person, one

vote principle for voters.

  In all events, the decisive question is not whether

Sheffield's lawsuit was a catalyst but whether it was a catalyst

for an outcome favorable to Sheffield.  Under the catalyst theory--

itself simply a practical test for discerning victory--a plaintiff

may achieve its victory in a lawsuit even if there is no award or

injunction, so long as the lawsuit effectively achieved a favorable

result sought by the plaintiff.  See Pearson, 980 F.2d at 43-45. 

The problem here is that, by any realistic measure, the result

achieved was not that sought by Sheffield.

  Nor does it help Sheffield's claim to point to the

interim declaratory ruling by the district court that the

preexisting scheme violated the one person, one vote principle.  No

one in the litigation appears seriously to have doubted that the

existing regime had to be changed; indeed, the parties had been

negotiating on this premise well before the lawsuit began.  In a

number of voting rights cases, the courts have declined to award

attorney's fees where efforts to amend the unlawful scheme began

prior to the filing of suit by the plaintiff.  A party is not

entitled to attorney's fees when he obtains relief through

litigation that he would have obtained anyway in the absence of

bringing a lawsuit.  See New Hampshire v. Adams, 159 F.3d 680, 687

(1st Cir. 1998).

  In any event, even if the declaratory ruling sped up the

negotiations, which may or may not be so, the question remains

whether the Sheffield plaintiffs ultimately prevailed in obtaining

relief in their favor, which they did not.  As for town voters

throughout the district, the main outcome of the case is that they

no longer have any direct vote for committee members.  This is

hardly a compelling case for awarding attorney's fees to a

plaintiff.

  Affirmed.