Case Explained: 26a0216p.06

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Filed: 2026-08-05 The sixth-circuit vacated the district court’s attorney fee award and remanded the case with instructions to enter a significantly reduced award, finding the original order an abuse of discretion. The court applied the “lodestar” method under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) and the standard from *Hensley v. Eckerhart*, which requires that fees be based on hours reasonably expended and a reasonable hourly rate, while mandating that counsel exercise “billing judgment” to exclude excessive, redundant, or unnecessary hours. The court identified several specific categories of non-compensable work that should have been excluded from the lodestar: 573 hours spent litigating failed class certification motions which were legally meritless under controlling precedent; 189 hours spent litigating claims against parties other than the County defendant; and 32.5 hours billed for a motion to reopen that was never filed. Furthermore, the court determined that only 75 of the 1,643 hours billed by counsel for work on the appeals to this court were reasonable, given that the Pacific Legal Foundation provided pro bono representation for the primary constitutional argument and the local firm largely copied those arguments. The court also found that no more than 10 of Mark McAlpine’s 999 billed hours were compensable due to a lack of concrete work product in his billing records. Finally, the court held that the district court abused its discretion by failing to adequately address the County’s argument for a blended hourly rate, instructing the district court to apply a $325 per hour blended rate to all reasonable hours rather than the higher individual rates previously approved. On remand, the district court must recalculate the fee award by excluding the specific categories of hours identified above, applying a 40% across-the-board reduction for pervasive overbilling and vague entries to the remaining hours, applying the 1.1 multiplier already used by the district court, and calculating the final award using the $325 blended hourly rate. The plaintiffs are not entitled to any fees for the litigation of this appeal. Do It For The Case Law is a news reporting service. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.