Phelps-Roper v. Koster, No. 14-3058 (8th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, filed suit in 2006 against Missouri state and state officials after the Missouri General Assembly enacted statewide restrictions on pickets and protests near funerals and funeral processions. In 2014, Missouri appealed the statute at issue while plaintiff's Rule 59(e) motion remained pending in district court. In this appeal, plaintiff challenged the district court's adverse judgments on her due process claim as well as the court's award of attorneys' fees. The court vacated the district court's judgment on the due process claim and remanded with instructions to dismiss her claim as moot. In regard to the attorneys' fees, the court concluded that the district court's 2/14th calculation was an abuse of discretion because its arithmetically simplistic fee calculation did not accurately reflect her degree of success of her interrelated claims. Moreover, even if the court accepted the district court's basic mathematical approach, its 2/14th calculation is inaccurate because it did not address whether it counted consent judgments, mooted claims, and dismissed claims as prevailing, neutral, or unsuccessful claims. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's award of attorneys' fees.
Court Description: Bye, Author, with Riley, Chief Judge, and Gruender, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Civil rights. For the court's prior opinion in the matter, see Phelps-Roper v. Koster, 713 F.3d 942 (8th Cir. 2013). The State of Missouri repealed the statutes in controversy while plaintiff's due process claim remained pending in the district court, and because the challenged statutes ceased to exist, there was no case or controversy to decide, and her challenge became moot; the district court's judgment on the due process claim is vacated and the matter remanded with directions to dismiss the due process count as moot; where the district court granted plaintiff 14% of her remaining fees because she only prevailed on two of her 14 claims, the court engaged in an arithmetically simplistic fee calculation that did not accurately reflect plaintiff's overall degree of success on her interrelated claims; even if the court accepted the district court's mathematical approach, the district court applied it incorrectly because it did not address whether it counted consent judgments, mooted claims and dismissed claims as prevailing, neutral or unsuccessful in making its award.
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