“factual determinations that a district court predicates a finding of waiver upon are reviewed for clear error, while the legal question of whether the conduct amounts to waiver is reviewed de novo”
How later courts described this case
- “factual determinations that a district court predicates a finding of waiver upon are reviewed for clear error, while the legal question of whether the conduct amounts to waiver is reviewed de novo”
- noting that we review a district courtʹs award or denial of fees under section 1988 using the deferential abuse of discretion standard, unless the decision is challenged on the basis of a mistake of law
- noting that we review the district courtʹs interpreta‐ tion of the phrase “prevailing party” de novo
- our review of a district court’s finding of waiver is de novo
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 15‐2203
KENNETH BAKER, et al.,
Plaintiffs‐Appellants,
v.
JEAN M. LINDGREN, et al.,
Defendants‐Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:11‐cv‐04197 — Harry D. Leinenweber, Judge.
ARGUED DECEMBER 5, 2016 — DECIDED MAY 10, 2017
Before EASTERBROOK and ROVNER, Circuit Judges, and
SHADID, District Judge.*
ROVNER, Circuit Judge. Kenneth Baker and several of his
family members sued the City of Chicago, eight named police
*
The Honorable James E. Shadid, of the Central District of Illinois, sitting
by designation.
2 No. 15‐2203
officers, a number of unknown officers, as well as two private
citizens and the company employing them, alleging civil rights
violations and state law tort claims. In the end, Baker won a
modest recovery from several City defendants on one of the
civil rights claims, and from the City defendants and a private
defendant on one of the state law tort claims, but the defen‐
dants prevailed on all the remaining claims. The district court
granted attorneys’ fees to Baker, but denied him costs as
prevailing party, instead awarding costs to the City for
prevailing against two other plaintiffs. Baker appeals the
amount of the attorneys’ fees awarded and the denial of costs
to Baker. Two other plaintiffs appeal the award of costs to the
defendants. We affirm in part and vacate and remand in part.
I.
Because the appeal is directed only at attorneys’ fees and
costs, we will give an abbreviated version of the facts to
provide context. The plaintiffs’ claims arose from an attempt
by Timothy Ghidotti, an employee of Reliable Recovery
Services, Inc., to repossess a Chevy Impala from Juanita
Horton, the step‐daughter of Kenneth Baker. Baker lived with
his wife Barbara, son Camden and minor daughter, A.B., in a
home in Chicago. Horton sometimes visited the home but did
not reside there. In the middle of a February night in 2010,
Ghidotti rang the bell at the Baker house, looking for Horton
and the Chevy Impala. Baker told Ghidotti that Horton did not
live there and then argued with Ghidotti, telling him to “get
the hell off my porch,” and to not return to the property.
Ghidotti left the porch and called 911 from his truck, falsely
telling the dispatcher that a man had threatened him with a
gun. Police officers Jean Lindgren and Jesus Vera responded to
No. 15‐2203 3
the scene, and were later joined by Sergeant Steven Martin.
Although Ghidotti first told the officers that he thought he saw
a gun in Baker’s hand, he soon admitted that he had not seen
a gun but had assumed from Baker’s demeanor that he had
one. The officers eventually entered the home and arrested
Baker on a charge of aggravated assault, based on Ghidotti’s
representation that he felt threatened during the encounter.
They did so even though Ghidotti admitted that he had not
seen a gun and even though Baker never threatened Ghidotti
by word or gesture. The officers also seized from the home a
shotgun owned by Baker and later added a charge of posses‐
sion of a firearm with an expired registration. Baker attended
nine court hearings before the two charges were dropped.
Baker, together with his wife and children (who were
present in the home during these events), brought a seventeen‐
count complaint against the City, the police officers, Reliable
Recovery and its employees, Ghidotti and Boris Jurkovic. The
Bakers alleged Illinois tort claims against the Reliable Recovery
defendants including four counts of trespass and one count of
intentional infliction of emotional distress. They asserted
Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment claims against the police
officers, including unconstitutional entry into the home;
unconstitutional search of the home; illegal detention in the
home; false arrest; failure to investigate; failure to intervene;
and conspiracy to violate civil rights. Kenneth Baker asserted
Illinois tort claims of malicious prosecution of the aggravated
assault charge and malicious prosecution of the weapon
registration charge against the City defendants and the
Reliable Recovery defendants. Kenneth Baker also asserted
supervisory liability against Dennis Walsh, a supervising
4 No. 15‐2203
officer at the station where Baker was brought after arrest.
Finally, all of the Baker plaintiffs alleged supervisory liability
against Sergeant Martin and an indemnification count against
the City of Chicago for the actions of its employees.
On cross‐motions for summary judgment, the district court
dismissed two police officers from the suit because they lacked
any involvement in the incident. The court denied the defen‐
dants’ motion for summary judgment on the illegal entry and
search claims, the failure to intervene charge, the conspiracy
count, and the malicious prosecution claims. The court granted
summary judgment in favor of the Reliable Recovery defen‐
dants on two of the trespass counts and allowed the other two
to proceed to trial. The court also denied Reliable Recovery’s
motion for summary judgment on the intentional infliction of
emotional distress claim. Because it was not a separately
cognizable claim, the court dismissed the failure to investigate
count. The court granted summary judgment in favor of
Kenneth Baker on the false arrest claim, allowing that claim to
proceed to trial solely on the question of damages. The court
dismissed the unknown officers from the case because the
plaintiffs made no effort to identify them through the discov‐
ery process and the statute of limitations had expired as to any
new defendants.
At trial, the jury awarded Kenneth Baker $25,000 on his
false arrest claim and $5,000 on his claim for malicious prose‐
cution of the aggravated assault charge. The jury otherwise
found in favor of the defendants on all remaining claims. Baker
then moved to recover $450,268 in attorneys’ fees from the City
defendants and costs from all defendants. The City defendants
sought to recover their costs from Barbara and Camden Baker
No. 15‐2203 5
(but not Baker’s minor child, A.B.), and moved to strike Baker’s
petition for attorneys’ fees. The district court denied the City’s
motion to strike Baker’s fee petition but reduced the hourly
rate for two of the attorneys who represented Baker, reduced
the number of approved hours, and then adjusted the lodestar
downward by 50% to reflect Baker’s limited success. This
resulted in a fee award to Baker in the amount of $164,395. The
court denied costs to Baker and granted them in favor of the
City against Barbara and Camden Baker, after making minor
adjustments to the amount requested. The plaintiffs appeal.
II.
On appeal, Kenneth Baker contends that the district court
should have granted his bill of costs as the prevailing party. He
also asserts that the court committed numerous errors in
reducing the amount of attorneys’ fees awarded. Barbara and
Camden Baker argue that the court erred in awarding costs to
the defendants.
A.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d)(1) provides that,
“[u]nless a federal statute, these rules, or a court order pro‐
vides otherwise, costs—other than attorneyʹs fees—should be
allowed to the prevailing party.” See also 28 U.S.C. § 1920
(listing the fees recoverable as “costs”). Rule 54(d)(1) creates a
presumption in favor of awarding costs to the prevailing party,
and we review the court’s decision on costs for abuse of
discretion. Myrick v. WellPoint, Inc., 764 F.3d 662, 666 (7th Cir.
2014); Rivera v. City of Chicago, 469 F.3d 631, 636 (7th Cir. 2006);
Cruz v. Town of Cicero, Ill., 275 F.3d 579, 591 (7th Cir. 2001). For
the purposes of Rule 54, a party is deemed “prevailing” if it
6 No. 15‐2203
prevails as to a substantial part of the litigation. Testa v. Village
of Mundelein, Ill., 89 F.3d 443, 447 (7th Cir. 1996). In a case with
mixed results, the district court has the discretion to determine
whether a party meets that standard. Gavoni v. Dobbs House,
Inc., 164 F.3d 1071, 1075 (7th Cir. 1999); Testa, 89 F.3d at 447;
Northbrook Excess & Surplus Ins. Co. v. Procter & Gamble Co., 924
F.2d 633, 641 (7th Cir. 1991) (noting that we apply a deferential
standard of review to the district courtʹs determination of
which party prevailed under Rule 54(d) and will not overturn
that decision absent an abuse of discretion).
The plaintiffs contend that we should review the district
court’s decision de novo because the court erred on a question
of law, namely, the definition of the term “prevailing party.”
Although it is true that we review de novo any legal questions
involving the interpretation of the phrase “prevailing party,”
the court did not err in defining that phrase. See Republic
Tobacco Co. v. North Atlantic Trading Co., 481 F.3d 442, 446 (7th
Cir. 2007) (noting that we review the district courtʹs interpreta‐
tion of the phrase “prevailing party” de novo). Indeed, the court
applied the very definition on which the plaintiffs rely. The
district court recognized that it should award costs to a party
that prevails on a substantial part of the litigation, and that a
party may meet that standard even when the party does not
prevail on every claim. Baker v. Ghidotti, 2015 WL 1888004, *7
(N. D. Ill. Apr. 24, 2015) (citing Testa, 89 F.3d at 447 and Slane
v. Mariah Boats, Inc., 164 F.3d 1065, 1068 (7th Cir. 1999)). The
district court also correctly noted that, in a case with mixed
results, it retains especially broad discretion to award or deny
costs. Baker, 2015 WL 1888004 at *7 (citing Gavoni, 164 F.3d at
1075).
No. 15‐2203 7
The court then applied that correct definition to the
outcome here. The jury was asked to return a verdict on
twenty‐two claims distributed among four plaintiffs, the court
noted. Baker prevailed on two of the six claims that he as‐
serted, recovering a total of $30,000, an award that the district
court characterized as “more than nominal, but certainly not
substantial.” Baker, 2015 WL 1888004 at *7 (internal quote
marks omitted). The defendants, on the other hand, prevailed
on all remaining claims, leading the court to determine that, on
balance, the defendants, not the plaintiffs prevailed on a
“substantial part” of the litigation. The court therefore denied
costs to the plaintiffs. On appeal, the plaintiffs urge this court
to find that the $30,000 recovery on two claims was a substan‐
tial victory, justifying an award of costs in their favor. But that
is simply a request to reweigh discretionary factors and
substitute our judgment for that of the district court. There was
no abuse of discretion in the district court’s decision to deny
costs to the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs also contend that the court erred in awarding
costs to the City as the prevailing party. But the court did not
abuse its discretion in determining that the City was the
prevailing party because Barbara and Camden Baker, the
plaintiffs against whom costs were awarded, lost all of their
claims against the City. The plaintiffs complain that the City
failed to segregate its costs, and because the verdict was split,
the City may not recover any costs. However, the plaintiffs did
not raise this argument until their motion to reconsider. The
district court correctly noted that arguments raised for the first
time in a motion to reconsider are waived. Brooks v. City of
Chicago, 564 F.3d 830, 833 (7th Cir. 2009). In sum, there was no
8 No. 15‐2203
abuse of discretion in either the court’s refusal to award costs
to plaintiffs or its decision to award costs to the City for the
claims raised by Barbara and Camden Baker.
B.
In an action to enforce a provision of section 1983, “the
court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other
than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the
costs,” 42 U.S.C. § 1988. Our review is limited to whether the
district court abused that discretion. Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461
U.S. 424, 437 (1983) (a district court has discretion in determin‐
ing the amount of a fee award under section 1988). See also
Cruz, 275 F.3d at 591 (noting that we review a district courtʹs
award or denial of fees under section 1988 using the deferential
abuse of discretion standard, unless the decision is challenged
on the basis of a mistake of law).
This standard makes sense for a number of
reasons: the district court is more familiar with
the work the winning attorneys devoted to the
case; review of a fee petition is a highly
fact‐specific exercise; and the district court has a
full appreciation of both the factual and the legal
history of the case (including those parts that
have dropped out by the time an appeal reaches
this court).
Cruz, 275 F.3d at 591–92. See also Hensley, 461 U.S. at 437
(emphasizing that the district court’s discretion is appropriate
“in view of the district court’s superior understanding of the
litigation and the desirability of avoiding frequent appellate
review of what essentially are factual matters”). Kenneth Baker
No. 15‐2203 9
is the only plaintiff to prevail on any claims and thus the only
plaintiff to seek fees. He urges this court to apply de novo
review to virtually every challenge raised, attempting to
reframe discretionary decisions as legal errors. But the district
court made no legal error that we can discern. Our review of
all of the issues is for abuse of discretion.
Although the district court determined that the defendants
were the prevailing parties for the purposes of Rule 54(d)(1),
the standard for determining a prevailing party under section
1988 is different. One formulation approved by the Supreme
Court is that plaintiffs may be considered prevailing parties for
the purpose of awarding attorneys’ fees if they succeed on any
significant issue in the litigation which achieves some of the
benefit the parties sought in bringing suit. Hensley, 461 U.S. at
433. The defendants did not dispute that Baker met this
standard when he prevailed on his section 1983 claim for false
arrest. The task for the district court, then, was to determine
what fee is reasonable, a task the district court here undertook
with great care. The “fee applicant bears the burden of
establishing entitlement to an award and documenting the
appropriate hours expended and hourly rates.” Hensley, 461
U.S. at 437.
In challenging the fee award, Baker asserts that (1) the
defendants should be estopped from requesting a lodestar
adjustment because they refused to engage in meaningful
settlement negotiations; (2) the court erred in reducing the
lodestar 50% because the results achieved were excellent; (3)
the court committed an arithmetic error by denying fees for
84.4 hours that Baker had already voluntarily discounted for
work on the Reliable Recovery claims; (4) the court erred in
10 No. 15‐2203
subtracting 128.5 hours of work as related solely to claims
against Reliable Recovery because much of the work would
have been necessary to other claims; (5) defendants should be
estopped from objecting to plaintiff’s hours because the City
did not provide time and work records for its attorneys; (6)
defendants should be estopped from challenging the number
of plaintiff’s attorney hours because the defendants’ objections
are disorganized, confusing and self‐contradictory; (7) the
court erred in deducting 9.9 hours as lower level work not
worthy of attorneys’ fees; (8) the court erred in deducting 4.1
hours as unnecessary; (9) the court erred in deducting 25.1
hours as vague; (10) the court should not have reduced hours
for reviewing court orders and conducting settlement
discussions; and (11) the court’s further reduction of thirty
hours was excessive.
The Supreme Court cautioned that a “request for attorney’s
fees should not result in a second major litigation.” Hensley, 461
U.S. at 437. The plaintiff did little to heed this warning, raising
eleven labeled objections and numerous sub‐objections to the
district court’s analysis of the fee petition. Some of the sub‐
objections are so picayune as to challenge the district court’s
decision on line items amounting to one‐ or two‐tenths of an
hour of attorney time. See Brief of Appellants, at 41–42. As is
apparent from Baker’s extensive list of issues on appeal, the
district court made a number of discretionary adjustments to
the hours claimed and also halved the lodestar to reflect
Baker’s limited success. We found no abuse of discretion in the
district court’s handling of ten of those eleven objections and
will not address them separately. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 436 (if
a “plaintiff has achieved only partial or limited success, the
No. 15‐2203 11
product of hours reasonably expended on the litigation as a
whole times a reasonable hourly rate may be an excessive
amount. This will be true even where the plaintiff’s claims
were interrelated, nonfrivolous, and raised in good faith. …
[T]he most critical factor is the degree of success obtained.”)
We limit our discussion to the only issue raised that has any
merit.
Baker contends that the district court committed an
arithmetic error when it deducted 84.4 hours of time that was
related solely to state law claims against Reliable Recovery
when he had already voluntarily deducted these hours. In his
fee petition, Baker conceded that section 1988 provides
attorneys’ fees only for actions to enforce certain federal laws.
The successful malicious prosecution claim was based on state
tort law and so Baker agreed that he may not recover fees for
that work. See Richardson v. City of Chicago, 740 F.3d 1099, 1102
(7th Cir. 2014) (section 1988 addresses fees for parties who
prevailed on certain federal claims). In light of that limitation,
Baker voluntarily deducted 84.2 hours for work performed on
the state law claims, which were primarily against the Reliable
Recovery defendants. R. 231. In the first three columns of a
four‐column exhibit to his fee petition, Baker listed the “Date,”
“Service provided,” and “Time expended (in hours).” The
fourth column was not labeled but its purpose is apparent
from the last page of the exhibit where Baker showed the 84.2
hour total of the fourth column under the title “Hours
Attributable Exclusively to Ghidotti and Reliable Recovery
Services, Inc.” These were the hours that Baker then
voluntarily deducted as related solely to state law Reliable
12 No. 15‐2203
Recovery claims, reducing the total hours claimed from 784.1
to 699.9.
In response to Baker’s petition, the City acknowledged
Baker’s concession that the City should not have to pay for
hours attributable to the Reliable Recovery defendants. But the
City objected that:
Plaintiffs’ Counsel did not properly account for
the full extent of her billable time. Even when
calculating billable time up to the date of the
summary judgment ruling only, March 28, 2014,
Plaintiffs’ counsel billed at least 128.5 hours for
issues attributed exclusively to Reliable
Recovery, Ghidotti and Boris Jurkovich. … As a
result, Plaintiffs’ hours should be adjusted to
reflect the 128.5 hours billed for services
attributable to Reliable Recovery.
R. 244, at 8. The first three columns of the City’s attached
exhibit largely copied the content of the first three columns of
Baker’s exhibit. On the defendants’ version, however, the third
column was labeled, “P’s Proposed Time expended (in hours).”
A fourth column listed the basis for the defendants’ objections
to certain line items (e.g. “clerical,” “vague,” or “Reliable
Recovery def”), and the fifth column listed the defendants’
proposed number of compensable hours.
That third column, which purported to list the plaintiff’s
proposed time expended, did not take into account the line
items on which the plaintiff had already discounted time. For
example, for an entry on September 30, 2011, the defendants
listed .3 hours as the plaintiff’s proposed time expended, even
No. 15‐2203 13
though a review of the plaintiff’s chart shows that the plaintiff
discounted that time to zero hours by deducting it in the fourth
column of his chart. This appears to be the case for nearly
every entry where Baker already discounted attorney time due
to work on the claims against Reliable Recovery defendants. At
the conclusion of the defendants’ chart, a summary shows
“Total Rel. Rec. Hours up to SJ” as 128.5 hours.
In reply, Baker noted that he had, in good faith, “deducted
84.2 hours spent exclusively on Reliable Recovery defendant
claims.” R. 245, at 7. Baker also noted:
Defendants seek to deduct more, without regard
for the fact that the Reliable Recovery
defendants were important witnesses in this
case and had to be dealt with, regardless of
whether plaintiff prevailed against them or not.
The Reliable Recovery defendants could not
simply be excised from the case. … Defendants
argue that certain entries are “too vague,
particularly given that in some instances it is
difficult to decipher whether the entry is
attributable to Reliable Recovery Services.” …
That is precisely the point. The work on this case
cannot be easily parsed into time for one set of
defendants and time for another set of
defendants. The claims were intertwined and
the time for all defendants merged. Whenever
possible, plaintiff excluded the time, when it
was clear that only the Reliable Recovery
defendants were involved. However, there are
time periods for which this is not possible.
14 No. 15‐2203
R.245, at 7‐8.
The district court, apparently misconstruing the City
defendants’ objections, assumed that they were proposing to
exclude 128.5 additional hours related to the Reliable Recovery
defendants. The district court erroneously stated that
“Defendants argue that the hours billed still include 128.5
hours of attorney time attributed exclusively” to Reliable
Recovery claims, and that “these entries should have been
eliminated along with the other 84.2 hours.” Baker, 2015 WL
1888004, at *4 (emphasis added). The court therefore
mistakenly added 128.5 to the 84.2 hours that the plaintiff had
already deducted, effectively double‐discounting 84.2 hours of
work. It did so even though the City had labeled the 128.5 hour
figure as a “total” of the hours to be deducted for Reliable
Recovery work, not an additional amount. Baker moved to
reconsider, pointing out that the district court erroneously
added the 84.2 hours already discounted to the 128.5 hours that
the defendants proposed, discounting those hours twice. Baker
attributed the error, in part, to the defendants misleading the
court. After making some corrections to his calculations, Baker
asserted that the court should add 77.9 hours back into the
lodestar to account for the error.
In an oral ruling from the bench, the district court denied
the motion to reconsider and declined to adjust the hours,
finding that Baker had waived the claim:
For the first time, plaintiff argues that
defendants misled the Court into twice
deducting 77.9 hours from [his attorney’s] time.
In addition, plaintiff argues that the Court erred
No. 15‐2203 15
in deducting time for certain work that would
have been performed, quote, “Whether Ghidotti
had been a defendant or not.” However,
plaintiff neglected to raise either of these
arguments or supply clarifying documentation
at the appropriate juncture on reply. As
previously noted, an argument raised for the
first time on a motion to reconsider is deemed
waived.
R. 266, at 4‐5.
On appeal, the parties agree that the district court made a
mistake in double‐discounting 77.9 hours. But the City
contends that we may not review the issue because (1) the
district court deemed it waived; (2) the district court did not
abuse its discretion in finding the issue waived; and (3) Baker
did not address the district court’s finding of waiver on appeal,
further waiving the issue. We will try to cut quickly through
this Russian nesting doll of an argument in reverse order:
Baker did address the waiver on appeal by arguing that the
court “was not correct” in finding that he had neglected to
raise the double‐counting issue in his reply. He also argued on
appeal that he raised the double counting issue as soon as he
could, and that it was not possible to anticipate the court’s
arithmetic error and raise it sooner in his fee petition reply
brief. This was essentially an argument that the district court
erred when it found that he had waived the issue. Although he
did not use the word “waiver” in making this argument in his
brief, he did address the concept of waiver. Baker therefore did
not waive the waiver issue.
16 No. 15‐2203
We turn to the substance of the waiver finding. The City
incorrectly contends that we should review the district court’s
finding of waiver for abuse of discretion, relying on cases from
outside the Seventh Circuit that are easily distinguishable. The
well‐settled law of this Circuit holds that we “review the
factual determinations upon which a district court predicates
a finding of waiver for clear error and the legal question of
whether the conduct amounts to waiver de novo.” e360 Insight
v. The Spamhaus Project, 500 F.3d 594, 599 (7th Cir. 2007). See
also White v. Stanley, 745 F.3d 237, 239 (7th Cir. 2014) (our
review of a district court’s finding of waiver is de novo); Ernst
& Young LLP v. Baker OʹNeal Holdings, Inc., 304 F.3d 753, 756
(7th Cir. 2002) (“factual determinations that a district court
predicates a finding of waiver upon are reviewed for clear
error, while the legal question of whether the conduct amounts
to waiver is reviewed de novo”). The district court predicated
its finding of waiver on its conclusion that Baker did not bring
the double‐counting to the court’s attention in his fee petition
reply brief, that he could have presented the issue earlier than
the motion to reconsider, and that a claim raised for the first
time in a motion to reconsider is waived. But in his fee petition
and in his reply brief thereto, Baker clearly argued for a total
deduction of 84.2 hours, the City argued for a total deduction
of 128.5 hours, and Baker could not have anticipated that the
district court would mistakenly add those totals together
instead of understanding that one subsumed the other. The
City never referred to its 128.5 hour figure as “additional”
hours, and clearly did not intend for the court to construe its
objection in that manner.
No. 15‐2203 17
Neither side could have anticipated that the district court
would misinterpret the defendants’ response to the fee
petition. Baker raised the issue in those terms at his earliest
opportunity, in a motion for reconsideration immediately after
the court made the unexpected error. The court construed the
motion as being brought pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 59(e) (a characterization that Baker does not
challenge), which allows a party to seek relief for a manifest
error of fact or law. Vesely v. Armslist LLC, 762 F.3d 661, 666
(7th Cir. 2014). The district court’s misapprehension of the
City’s calculation certainly qualifies as a manifest error of fact.
Because nothing in the fee petition briefing alerted Baker to the
potential for the court’s misunderstanding, the court erred in
concluding that Baker could have raised the issue earlier. Baker
had not waived the issue.
The district court’s mistaken calculation is understandable.
The City’s exhibit includes as “plaintiff’s proposed time
expended” 77.9 hours that the plaintiff had already discounted
to zero, unintentionally (we assume) causing the court to
believe that these were additional hours attributable to Reliable
Recovery claims rather than hours that the plaintiff had
already discounted. In replying to the City’s brief and exhibits,
Baker simply argued that he had already deducted 84.2 hours
and that the defendants sought to “deduct more,” without
quantifying the additional amount and perhaps inadvertently
signaling that all of the hours detailed by the City were in
addition to the hours already deducted by Baker. The court, for
its part, could have compared the charts appended to the
parties’ respective filings to see whether the defendants’ 128.5
hour figure already included the hours discounted by Baker.
18 No. 15‐2203
In any case, there is no dispute at this point that the court
mistakenly double‐discounted 77.9 hours of time attributed to
Reliable Recovery claims. On remand, those hours should be
added back to the lodestar calculation. In all other respects, the
judgment is affirmed. The parties shall bear their own costs on
appeal.
AFFIRMED IN PART;
VACATED AND REMANDED IN PART.