REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION

WILLIAM E. CASSADY, Magistrate Judge.

This cause is before the Court for entry of a report and recommendation, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) and Rule 54(d)(2)(D) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, on plaintiff's application for an award of attorney's fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act ("EAJA"), 28 U.S.C. § 2412. (Doc. 21.) Upon consideration of all pertinent materials contained in this file, it is determined that plaintiff should receive a reasonable attorney's fee in the amount of $1,663.94 under the EAJA for legal services rendered by her attorney in this Court. See Astrue v. Ratliff, 560 U.S. 586, 592 & 593, 130 S.Ct. 2521, 2526 & 2526-2527, 177 L.Ed.2d 91 (2010) ("Ratliff [] asserts that subsection (d)(1)(A)'s use of the verb `award' renders § 2412(d) fees payable directly to a prevailing party's attorney[.] . . . We disagree. . . . The plain meaning of the word `award' in subsection (d)(1)(A) is [] that the court shall `give or assign by . . . judicial determination' to the `prevailing party' (here, Ratliff's client Kills Ree) attorney's fees in the amount sought and substantiated under, inter alia, subsection (d)(1)(B). . . . The fact that the statute awards to the prevailing party fees in which her attorney may have a beneficial interest or a contractual right does not establish that the statute `awards' the fees directly to the attorney. For the reasons we have explained, the statute's plain text does the opposite-it `awards' the fees to the litigant[.]"); Brown v. Astrue, 271 Fed.Appx. 741, 743 (10th Cir. Mar. 27, 2008) ("The district court correctly held that Mr. Brown's assignment of his right in the fees award to counsel does not overcome the clear EAJA mandate that the award is to him as the prevailing party, and the fees belong to him. Thus, the district court correctly declined to award the fees directly to counsel.").1

FINDINGS OF FACT

On May 15, 2015, this Court entered a Rule 58 judgment reversing and remanding this cause to the Commissioner of Social Security pursuant to sentence four of 42 U.S.C. § 405(g) for further proceedings. (Doc. 19; see also Doc. 18.) The application for an award of attorney's fees and expenses under the EAJA was filed on June 12, 2015 (Doc. 21), twenty-eight (28) days after entry of final judgment (compare id. with Doc. 19). In the application, plaintiff requests attorney's fees in the amount of $1,663.94 to compensate her attorney for the time (8.90 hours) spent representing her before this Court as of the date of the filing of the fee application. (See Doc. 21, Professional Services.) The Commissioner of Social Security was given until June 24, 2015 to file a response to plaintiff's application for attorney's fees (Doc. 22); however, she opted to file no response (compare Docket Sheet (no response) with Doc. 22 ("Defendant is ORDERED to file her response to the EAJA motion, if any there be, on or before the submission date." (some emphasis supplied)).

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

The Equal Access to Justice Act requires a district court to "award to a prevailing party . . . fees and other expenses . . . incurred by that party in any civil action . . ., including proceedings for judicial review of agency action, brought by or against the United States . . ., unless the court finds that the position of the United States was substantially justified or that special circumstances make an award unjust." 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A). It is imminently clear in this case that plaintiff is a prevailing party under the EAJA2 and that the position of the United States in this case was not substantially justified, given that it was the government who requested a sentence four remand in this case (see Doc. 16).

The EAJA requires a prevailing party to file an application for attorney's fees within thirty (30) days of final judgment in the action. 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(B). The thirty-day clock will not begin to run in this case until this Court's reversal and remand order of May 15, 2015 becomes final, which will occur at the end of the sixty (60) days for appeal provided under Rule 4(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, see Shalala v. Schaefer, 509 U.S. 292, 302, 113 S.Ct. 2625, 2632, 125 L.Ed.2d 239 (1993), that is, July 14, 2015. The motion filed in this case (Doc. 21), bearing a date of June 12, 2015, is extremely premature yet no less timely. See Myers v. Sullivan, 916 F.2d 659, 678-679 n.20 (11th Cir. 1990).

The EAJA, like 42 U.S.C. § 1988, is a fee-shifting statute. The Supreme Court has indicated that "`the most useful starting point for determining the amount of a reasonable fee is the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate.'" Watford v. Heckler, 765 F.2d 1562, 1568 (11th Cir. 1985) (EAJA), quoting Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 433, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1939, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983) (§ 1988); see Jean v. Nelson, 863 F.2d 759, 772-773 (11th Cir. 1988) (discussing the reasonableness of the hours expended in the context of contentions by the government that the fee requests were not supported by sufficient documentation and often involved a duplication of effort), aff'd sub nom. Commissioner, I.N.S. v. Jean, 496 U.S. 154, 110 S.Ct. 2316, 110 L.Ed.2d 134 (1990).

Hensley, supra, 461 U.S. at 433-434, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-1940 (citations omitted); see also id., at 437, 103 S.Ct. at 1941 ("[T]he fee applicant bears the burden of establishing entitlement to an award and documenting the appropriate hours expended and hourly rates."); ACLU of Georgia v. Barnes, 168 F.3d 423, 428 (11th Cir. 1999) ("If fee applicants do not exercise billing judgment, courts are obligated to do it for them, to cut the amount of hours for which payment is sought, pruning out those that are `excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary.' Courts are not authorized to be generous with the money of others, and it is as much the duty of courts to see that excessive fees and expenses are not awarded as it is to see that an adequate amount is awarded."); Norman v. Housing Authority of City of Montgomery, 836 F.2d 1292, 1301 (11th Cir. 1988) ("Excluding excessive or otherwise unnecessary hours under the rubric of `billing judgment' means that a lawyer may not be compensated for hours spent on activities for which he would not bill a client of means who was seriously intent on vindicating similar rights, recognizing that in the private sector the economically rational person engages in some cost benefit analysis.").

In Norman, supra, the Eleventh Circuit indicated that "the measure of reasonable hours is determined by the profession's judgment of the time that may be conscionably billed and not the least time in which it might theoretically have been done." 836 F.2d at 1306. Because the defendant has interposed no objection whatsoever to plaintiff's EAJA application (see Docket Sheet), the Court finds that plaintiff's counsel reasonably spent 8.90 hours on legal tasks in this case.

With respect to a determination of the hourly rate to apply in a given EAJA case, for services performed by attorneys, the express language of the Act, as amended by the Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996, provides in pertinent part as follows:

28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(A) (Cum.Supp. 1997).

In Meyer v. Sullivan, 958 F.2d 1029 (1992), the Eleventh Circuit determined that the EAJA establishes a two-step analysis for determining the appropriate hourly rate to be applied in calculating attorney's fees under the Act.

Id. at 1033-1034 (citations and footnote omitted).

For years, the prevailing market rate in the Southern District of Alabama was $125.00 per hour. See, e.g., Willits v. Massanari, CA 00-0530-RV-C; Boggs v. Massanari, 00-0408-P-C; Boone v. Apfel, CA 99-0965-CB-L. However, this Court has adjusted that rate to account for the increase in the cost of living. Lucy v. Barnhart, CA 06-0147-C, Doc. 32. More specifically, the Court has adopted the following formula to be used in calculating all future awards of attorney's fees under the EAJA: "`($125/hour) × (CPI-U Annual Average "All Items Index", South Urban, for month and year of temporal midpoint)/152.4, where 152.4 equals the CPI-U of March 1996, the month and year in which the $125 cap was enacted.'" (Id. at 11, quoting Doc. 31, at 2)

The temporal midpoint in this case was February 8, 2015, the complaint having been prepared on November 3, 2014 (compare Doc. 1 with Doc. 21, Professional Services) and the Court having entered its order and judgment on May 15, 2015 (Docs. 18-19). The CPI-U for February of 2015 was 227.944. Plugging the relevant numbers into the foregoing formula renders the following equation: $125×227.944/152.4. Completion of this equation renders an hourly rate of $186.96.

In consideration of the foregoing, the plaintiff is to be awarded an attorney's fee in the amount of $1,663.94 under the EAJA for the 8.90 hours her attorney spent performing work traditionally performed by attorneys in social security cases.

CONCLUSION

The Magistrate Judge RECOMMENDS that plaintiff be awarded attorney's fees in the amount of $1,663.94 under the Equal Access to Justice Act, representing compensation for 8.90 hours of service by William T. Coplin, Jr., Esquire, at the cost-of-living-adjusted rate of $186.96.

NOTICE OF RIGHT TO FILE OBJECTIONS

A copy of this report and recommendation shall be served on all parties in the manner provided by law. Any party who objects to this recommendation or anything in it must, within fourteen (14) days of the date of service of this document, file specific written objections with the Clerk of this Court. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1); FED.R.CIV.P. 72(b); S.D.ALA. L.R. 72.4. The parties should note that under Eleventh Circuit Rule 3-1, "[a] party failing to object to a magistrate judge's findings or recommendations contained in a report and recommendation in accordance with the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1) waives the right to challenge on appeal the district court's order based on unobjected-to factual and legal conclusions if the party was informed of the time period for objecting and the consequences on appeal for failing to object. In the absence of a proper objection, however, the court may review on appeal for plain error if necessary in the interests of justice." 11th Cir. R. 3-1. In order to be specific, an objection must identify the specific finding or recommendation to which objection is made, state the basis for the objection, and specify the place in the Magistrate Judge's report and recommendation where the disputed determination is found. An objection that merely incorporates by reference or refers to the briefing before the Magistrate Judge is not specific.