- 52 -
work on the actual fee request even began. That seems excessive
to us, and we accordingly reduce those hours by 50 percent.
b. Time Relating to Unsuccessful Claims
All of the adjustments we have made thus far relate to
either (1) documentation or (2) what may be termed the efficiency
aspect of the reasonableness standard incorporated into section
7430. In Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 436 (1983), a case
involving CRAFAA (the general civil rights fee-shifting
statute),46 the Supreme Court addressed another aspect of
reasonableness in this context:
If * * * a plaintiff has achieved only partial or
limited success, the product of hours reasonably
expended on the litigation as a whole times a
reasonable hourly rate may be an excessive amount.* * *
* * * That the plaintiff is a “prevailing party”
therefore may say little about whether the expenditure
of counsel’s time was reasonable in relation to the
success achieved. * * *
Professor Sisk sometimes refers to this aspect of the
reasonableness standard as the limited success factor. Sisk,
“The Essentials of the Equal Access to Justice Act: Court Awards
of Attorney’s Fees for Unreasonable Government Conduct (Part
Two),” 56 La. L. Rev. 1, 119 (1995).
The Supreme Court subsequently referred to the limited
success factor in the context of “fees for fees” (i.e., fees
46 “The standards set forth in this opinion are generally
applicable in all cases in which Congress has authorized an award
of fees to a ‘prevailing party.’” Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S.
424, 433 n.7 (1983).
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