Civil Rights
4th Circuit Nixes Attorney Fee Award to Defendant in Terrorism Tort Case
Posted May 7, 2009, 11:43 am CST
By Martha Neil
In an unusual award of attorney fees to a prevailing defendant in a civil rights case, a federal court said a Muslim family whose Virginia home was lawfully searched had to pay about $41,000 to an individual they accused of conspiring with federal agents to fabricate evidence supporting the search.
But now a divided 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the attorney fee award, the National Law Journal reports.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia correctly determined that the search was lawful and dismissed the family's case on a summary judgment motion, the Richmond, Va.-based 4th Circuit found. But the district court abused its discretion by applying the "extreme" sanction of an attorney fees award, because the plaintiffs didn't make a claim that was "frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless," the two-judge majority explains in a written opinion (PDF) yesterday.
Nonetheless the attorney who represented defendant Rita Katz proclaimed victory. Although Katz—who is described in the 4th Circuit opinion as a "self-professed expert on the tracking of terrorist organizations"—won't get her defense costs reimbursed, a high bar applies to such attorney-fee judgments, says Laura Handman. A partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, she co-chairs the firm's appellate practice.
"The main event is the dismissal of the constitutional tort claims, and that was unanimous and very strong," she tells the National Law Journal.