A real estate agent who accepted an offer of judgment for five times less than what his opponent subsequently received to settle his counterclaims still qualifies as the prevailing party under the Civil Rights Act, according to a novel decision that divided the South Carolina Supreme Court.
The 4-1 opinion reverses a trial judge’s ruling and allows the agent, William Hueble, to seek substantial attorneys’ fees and costs. He settled his claims for $5,100. But his attorneys are asking for $149,207 in fees and costs.
Jack Riordan of Smith Moore Leatherwood in Greenville and Gregory Harris and Jonathan Gasser of Harris & Gasser in Columbia represented Hueble. They declined to discuss the case – the trial court still has to calculate their fees. The defense attorneys did not respond to interview requests.
But Columbia-based litigator Robert Goings, who reviewed the decision at Lawyers Weekly’s request, predicted that the case “will cause practitioners who defend Section 1983 [civil rights] cases to be more careful in wording their offer of judgment.”
The offer that Hueble accepted was silent about attorneys’ fees. It also did not specify which claims were wrapped up in the offer, leaving it up to the court to decide whether the offer included Hueble’s 1983 claim.
The trial judge, Eugene Griffith of Greenwood County, ruled that the offer did not encompass the claim, which would have shut the door on Hueble’s attorneys’ fees. But the Supreme Court disagreed.
“The offer did not distinguish causes of action,” Justice Kaye Hearn wrote in the majority opinion, “and because it resolved the entirety of Hueble’s case, we interpret it to address all the claims involved – including the §1983 action.”
Trouble with a DNR officer
The Supreme Court’s decision of first impression stems from a dispute between Hueble, a land specialist at National Land Realty’s Greenville office, and state Department of Natural Resources officer Eric Vaughn.
Hueble accused Vaughn of violating his constitutional rights to due process and equal protection by retaliating against him after he declined to allow Vaughn to continue hunting on land that he purchased. The seller had warned Hueble that it would be in his “best interest” to let Vaughn continue to use the property, according to the Supreme Court decision.
After Hueble told Vaughn to stay off the land, Vaughn and other DNR officers crashed a turkey hunt on the property and accused Hueble of illegally baiting the field. Vaughn and the officers also allegedly hunted on the land without Hueble’s permission, entered his barn and tampered with his game cameras.
Hueble complained to Vaughn’s supervisor, who sided with Vaughn, prompting Hueble to file a civil rights complaint that was eventually settled with the aforementioned joint offer of judgment under Rule 68 of the state’s civil procedure rules.
Vaughn, who filed counterclaims against Hueble for slander, libel, abuse of process and intentional infliction of emotional distress, subsequently negotiated a $25,000 settlement with Hueble’s homeowner’s insurance provider.
Hueble was unaware of Vaughn’s settlement, which was reached two days before the trial court was slated to hear Hueble’s motion for attorneys’ fees.
During the hearing, Vaughn contended that Hueble was not entitled to recover fees because he had received the smaller settlement. He also asserted that Hueble was unable to show that his recovery was based on his 1983 claim.
Looking for “meaningful relief”
The majority decision in favor of Hueble means that whenever a party accepts an offer of judgment in a 1983 case, no matter how small that offer might be, they are the prevailing party for the purpose of pursuing attorneys’ fees.
Hueble’s case presented the state’s highest court with a question that it had not answered before, but its opinion “is well-rooted in federal jurisprudence,” said Goings, the Columbia lawyer.
The majority based its decision on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2001 decision in Buckhannon, which essentially requires a litigant to “receive meaningful relief” that can be enforced by the court in order to qualify as a prevailing party, according to Hearn.
That Vaughn received a larger settlement than Hueble was of no importance, Hearn added: “The measure of success for a civil rights’ claim should not depend on the success of unrelated claims.
“This practice would eviscerate Congress’ expressed desire to incentivize attorneys to take on civil rights’ litigation and condone civil rights’ violations by creating a means to escape the payment of attorneys’ fees and costs when a party is successful on unrelated permissive claims.”
Disparate ‘awards are independent’
But in his dissent, Justice John Kittredge contended that the majority should not have turned a “blind eye to the resolution” of Vaughn’s counterclaim.
“In my judgment, the relative magnitude of relief obtained is a key factor in this analysis,” he wrote, concluding that Hueble was not the prevailing party.
He added, “Try as it might, the majority cannot give [Hueble] a pass on the payment of $25,000 to settle [Vaughn’s] counterclaim.”
But Hearn wrote that the majority found Kittredge’s “reasoning misplaced,” stating that he had failed “to acknowledge that Hueble’s and Vaughn’s awards are independent.”
The 15-page decision is Hueble v. South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (Lawyers Weekly No. 010-036-16). An opinion digest is available at nclawyersweeky.com.
Follow Phillip Bantz on Twitter @SCLWBantz