Baker v. Lindgren

Dist. Ct. did not abuse its discretion in awarding defendants their costs associated with their defense of plaintiff’s section 1983 and state tort actions arising out of plaintiff’s arrest and prosecution on aggravated assault charges when third-party attempted to repossess car belonging to plaintiff’s step-daughter. Record showed that defendant prevailed on all but plaintiff’s false arrest and malicious prosecution claims, and under Rule 54(d)(1), Dist. Ct. could properly find that defendants were “prevailing parties,” where plaintiff prevailed on only two of six claims against defendants, even though jury awarded plaintiff $30,000 on said claims. Moreover, plaintiff’s appeal on said issue amounted to nothing more than improper request for Ct. to reweigh discretionary factors that Dist. Ct. used to make said finding. Also, Dist. Ct. did not generally err in calculating award of plaintiff’s attorney fees at $164,395, which represented reduction from $450,268 sought by plaintiffs. Ten out of eleven objections to reductions made by Dist. Ct. were without merit, since they concerned either picayune matters involving claims of one and two-tenths of hour or concerned reasonable reductions based on plaintiff’s limited success. However, Ct. erred when it mistakenly double-discounted 77.9 hours of attorney time, where plaintiff had already reduced said hours in its initial fee request.