Case:
A.R. v. New York City Dept. of Educ.
___F.3d ___LEXIS 8124, 2005 WL 1088427 (2d Cir. 2005)
Education
Federal District Court
May 10, 2005
Do "winners" in administrative
hearings governing special education issues constitute "prevailing
parties?" If so, are the parents entitled to attorneys’ fees pursuant
to the Supreme Court’s controversial Buckhannon decision? They do
and they are, on both counts, according to the second circuit court
of appeals in the very important case of A.R. v. New York City Dept.
of Educ.
The background of the case
revolves around several sets of parents who instituted four separate
administrative proceedings challenging the special education programs
that the New York City Department of Education ("Department") provided
to their disabled children pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act ("IDEA"). In two of the proceedings, the impartial
hearing officers ("IHO") entered decisions for the plaintiffs on
the merits while in the two others, the IHO’s recorded and "so ordered"
the terms of settlement agreements between the parties. The plaintiffs
sought but were denied attorneys fees from the Department pursuant
to IDEA’s fee shifting provision, 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(3)(B), and
then brought suit in actions in the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of New York. Two district court judges awarded
the parent plaintiffs attorneys’ fees as "prevailing parties" under
IDEA prompting this appeal by the Department.
The circuit court tackled
two issues, addressing first whether the plaintiffs were in fact
"prevailing parties," and then analyzing whether the amount of attorneys’
fees requested was "reasonable." At stake was over $15,000 in fees
relative to the four separate cases.
In a thorough and comprehensive
decision, the circuit court rebuffed the Department’s challenge,
which was based on the tenet that the plaintiffs who settled their
cases with settlement agreements "so ordered" by IHO’s were not
prevailing parties eligible for attorneys fees, and, inter alia,
that the rates sought by the plaintiffs were outrageously excessive.
With regard to the first issue, the court carefully scrutinized
the subtleties of the fee shifting theories discussed by the U.S.
Supreme Court in Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health
& Human Res.,532 U.S. 598, 600 (2001). While Buckhannon specifically
addressed the fee shifting provisions of the Americans with Disabilities
Act and the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988, its application
to other fee shifting statutory schemes has been significant. In
this case, the court found that the administrative imprimatur of
"so ordering" the two settlement agreements resulted in the administrative
analogs of consent decrees. The court found that there was no reason
to distinguish the outcomes of the settled cases from those heard
by the IHO and decided on the merits. Buckhannon’s critical language,
established in the context of judicial proceedings, that "court
ordered consent decrees create the ‘material alteration of the legal
relationship of the parties’ necessary to permit an award of attorney’s
fees" mandates that administrative orders were, in essence, administrative
consent decrees. Here, the terms of the settlement agreements specifically
incorporated the terms of the settlements in dispositive administrative
orders, clearly fitting the Buckhannon requirement for "administrative
imprimatur."
In affirming the substantial
attorneys’ fees award, the circuit court found the fees to be reasonable
based on the "community" where the litigation occurred. In rejecting
the Department’s contention that the "community" consisted of the
wider geographic area constituting the five boroughs of New York
City, rather than the community of the Southern District of New
York (Manhattan), the court indicated that the strong nexus between
the court, the lawyers, and the where the clients reside all weighed
in favor of viewing the community as Manhattan based. In addition,
the fees were determined to be "reasonable" based on the expertise
of the lawyers involved, the prevailing market rates (the lodestar
method), and the general rates charged by other attorneys in analogous
administrative proceedings. In addition, the court added a final
blow to the Department by indicating that the plaintiffs might be
entitled to additional legal fees in connection with the second
circuit appeal.
This case may be accessed
on the second circuit court of appeals’ website at http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov
or by going to Westlaw of LEXIS websites.
