A federal judge on Thursday approved an award of $785,355 in state-paid legal fees to attorney John Walker of Little Rock and his team for work dating back to 1993 on behalf of black students in the long-running Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit.
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U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. approved part of the request for fees from the legal team that represents the class of black students who are known as the Joshua intervenors.
The awarded amount is more than the $500,000 originally contemplated for the intervenors in a January 2014 settlement agreement among the parties in the 32-year-old case, but it is less than the approximately $3.3 million that the Joshua team requested. The legal team in June asked for about $1.9 million for time spent on the case plus a $1.4 million "enhancement" for exceptional work.
"This case is like none other in this Court," Marshall wrote in a 21-page order Thursday. "And Joshua's lawyers -- especially Mr. Walker -- have done an exceptionally good job for their clients. They've done so in the face of much public criticism. They've forgone other work. The recent settlement was a good result for Joshua.
"But none of the circumstances argued convinces the Court that a multiplier is justified," Marshall continued. "Joshua's lawyers have, over the years, been paid several million dollars. They've deserved that compensation -- the workman is worthy of his hire. [A fee of] $785,355 more is a reasonable fee for Joshua's State-related work since 1993."
The judge's decision on legal fees comes more than a year after attorneys representing the Arkansas attorney general's office; the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special districts; the Joshua intervenors; and the Knight intervenors who represent employees in the three school districts, reached a settlement that will end state desegregation aid of nearly $70 million a year to the three districts after the 2017-18 school year. The state has paid $1.3 billion in desegregation aid over more than 20 years.
"This decision moves the State one step closer to ending litigation in the long-running Little Rock school desegregation lawsuit," Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said Thursday in a statement emailed by her staff.
"I am pleased the Court agreed that the request for payment of attorneys' fees totaling $3.3 million was excessive," Rutledge said. "I will continue to review this decision."
Walker, a Democratic state representative who was at the Capitol for the last day of the legislative session, said Thursday evening that he was aware of the judge's order but had not yet read it. He referred questions to Little Rock attorney Hank Bates, who along with attorney John Williams prepared the motion for the fees last year. Bates did not respond to an email request for comment Thursday afternoon.
In addition to terms for ending the desegregation payments, the January 2014 settlement included a footnote written by the attorneys stating that each of the three school districts would receive $250,000 from the state for reimbursement of legal fees to be paid within 90 days of the judge approving the settlement.
Kelsey Bailey, chief financial officer for the Little Rock School District, said Thursday that the district received that money shortly after the judge approved the settlement.
The footnote in the settlement also stated that the Joshua and Knight intervenors are "prevailing parties" in regard to matters dealing with the state and were entitled to "reasonable attorney's fees, in the amount of $500,000 for the Joshua intervenors and in the amount of $75,000 for the Knight intervenors unless contested, in which event the Court may award a reasonable fee unless otherwise agreed upon."
"The attorney's fees for the three districts and the Knight Intervenors have been resolved without dispute insofar as the Court knows," Marshall wrote. "The Joshua Intervenors and the State, though, have fallen out. The $500,000 presumptive fee in the settlement is no longer agreed."
The judge reduced the hourly rates of pay initially requested for each member of the Joshua team and lowered the number of hours worked by the team members in six areas of the decades-old case.
Those areas were: litigating the state's obligation to monitor desegregation efforts in the three districts; monitoring the districts for compliance with a 1989 settlement; challenging the state's workers' compensation benefit program for the districts in 1994; opposing the formation of a new Jacksonville district in 2003; opposing the Pulaski County Special School District's request for unitary status in 2007-2011; and getting ready for trial on the state's motion for release from the case, which led to negotiations on the 2014 settlement.
The judge credited Walker, the lead attorney in the case, with a total of 1,590 hours of work multiplied by $325 an hour for a total award of $516,750 of the overall $785,355.
In the motion for fees, Walker asked for $400 an hour for 2,771 hours. The hourly rate was based on rates approved by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2012 in the same case. Attorneys for the state argued against those rates, saying they were unreasonable for work going back two decades. The intervenors countered that the time lag justified the higher rates because lawyers have waited so long for payment.
"Both sides are partly right," Marshall wrote. "The Court of Appeals' decision establishes reasonable rates for recent work -- the appellate proceedings lasted from mid-2010 until early 2012. It would be unreasonable, nonetheless, to use those rates for all of Joshua's State-related work since 1993."
The rates set by the judge reflect the experience and expertise of the team members, the kind of work done, the delay in payment, the local market rates for attorneys and paralegals, the lack of any separate claim for expenses, and the change in rates over time.
"The Court concludes that using one amount for each person best captures all these variables," Marshall said. "The numbers are necessarily inexact; they somewhat overstate the rate for work in years' past, while somewhat understating it for recent work."
"In a word, the imprecision is equitable," he wrote.
In regard to evaluating the hours worked in each facet of the case, Marshall found that part of the Joshua team kept contemporaneous time records of their work, and others based their hours on estimates and reconstructions of what they did. Sometimes those estimates were based in part on the hours worked by attorneys for the other parties in the lawsuit.
Concerning the Joshua intervenors' work in challenging the state's compliance with its obligation to monitor the desegregation efforts in the three districts, Marshall reduced the requested hours by about 50 percent "because Joshua's success was limited."
As for the Joshua intervenors' challenge to the Pulaski County Special district's efforts to be declared unitary, the judge awarded the team 20 percent of the requested fees. And on the state's request to be released from the case and the desegregation payments -- which turned into successful negotiations on a settlement -- the court approved the requested fees with only marginal reductions.
In regard to the Joshua intervenors' monitoring of the district -- the area in which the greatest number of hours were listed -- Marshall reduced the requested hours by about 60 percent in part because of deficient time records and because the team was only partly successful. But he also said that Joshua's work "with the districts helped make sure the remedy was real, year-in and year out."
Joy Springer, Walker's legal assistant and the chief monitor of the districts' desegregation efforts, was credited with 1,696 hours at a rate of $90 a hour, totaling $152,640. Springer was elected to the Little Rock School Board in September, but that board was dismissed by the Arkansas Board of Education when the state assumed control of the district in January.
Robert Pressman, an attorney from Lexington, Mass., is credited with $98,725 for 358 hours of work, Marshall ruled.
Little Rock attorney Austin Porter Jr.'s share is $8,000 for 32 hours of work at $250 an hour, and the late Evelyn Jackson's share was $9,240 for 154 hours of work at $60 dollars an hour. Jackson primarily represented the Joshua intervenors on the Magnet Review Committee, which was created by the federal court to set policy for the six interdistrict, special program schools in Little Rock.
Attorneys for the legal team said last year that after the 1989 agreement in the lawsuit, the state and three school districts combined to pay the NAACP Legal Defense Fund $3.15 million for work dating as far back as 33 years. The Joshua intervenors' current counsel received a portion of that payment. While the state has not paid fees to the intervenors in the years since 1993, the school districts over that time have made occasional payments to the intervenors and regular payments to their own attorneys in the case.
Metro on 04/03/2015