798
Opinion of the Court
hourly fee. This method yielded as § 406(b) fees $3,135 from Gisbrecht's recovery, $5,461.50 from Miller's, and $6,550 from Sandine's. Offsetting the EAJA awards, the court determined that no portion of Gisbrecht's or Sandine's past-due benefits was payable to counsel, and that only $296.75 of Mill-er's recovery was payable to her counsel as a § 406(b) fee. The three claimants appealed.6
Adhering to Circuit precedent applying the lodestar method to calculate fees under § 406(b), the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit consolidated the cases 7 and affirmed the District Court's fee dispositions. Gisbrecht v. Apfel, 238 F. 3d 1196 (2000). The Appeals Court noted that fees determined under the lodestar method could be adjusted by applying 12 further factors, one of them, "whether the fee is fixed or contingent." Id., at 1198 (quoting Kerr v. Screen Extras Guild, Inc., 526 F. 2d 67, 70 (CA9 1975)).8 While "a district
6 Although the claimants were named as the appellants below, and are named as petitioners here, the real parties in interest are their attorneys, who seek to obtain higher fee awards under § 406(b). For convenience, we nonetheless refer to claimants as petitioners. See Hopkins v. Cohen, 390 U. S. 530, 531, n. 2 (1968). We also note that the Commissioner of Social Security here, as in the Ninth Circuit, has no direct financial stake in the answer to the § 406(b) question; instead, she plays a part in the fee determination resembling that of a trustee for the claimants. See, e. g., Lewis v. Secretary of Health and Human Servs., 707 F. 2d 246, 248 (CA6 1983).
7 A fourth case, Anderson v. Apfel, No. CV-96-6311-HO (Ore., Sept. 29, 1999), was also consolidated with petitioners' cases; we denied certiorari in Anderson in the order granting certiorari on petitioners' question. See 534 U. S. 1039 (2001).
8 Kerr directed consideration of "(1) the time and labor required, (2) the novelty and difficulty of the questions involved, (3) the skill requisite to perform the legal service properly, (4) the preclusion of other employment by the attorney due to acceptance of the case, (5) the customary fee, (6) whether the fee is fixed or contingent, (7) time limitations imposed by the client or the circumstances, (8) the amount involved and the results obtained, (9) the experience, reputation, and ability of the attorneys, (10) the 'undesirability' of the case, (11) the nature and length of the pro-
Page: Index Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007