TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge.
This is the sixth (and hopefully the final) installment of Petitioner David Eduardo Castañeda's tumultuous voyage through our nation's immigration system. Castañeda began his journey more than twenty years ago, when he arrived in the United States seeking political asylum based on the alleged persecution he suffered at the hands of the Shining Path, a ruthless guerrilla organization bent on overthrowing the government of Perú. On February 6, 2012, after his case generated three court-of-appeals opinions, one district court opinion, and numerous administrative determinations, an Immigration Judge (IJ) finally granted asylum to Castañeda and his family members. Subsequently, on April 12, 2012, we entered final judgment closing Castañeda's case. See Castañeda-Castillo v. Holder, 676 F.3d 1 (1st Cir.2012) ("Castañeda V"). In so doing, we cautioned that we were taking "no position on the deadline for filing, or potential merit of, an application for attorneys' fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act." Id. at 3. On July 12, 2012, Castañeda filed such a petition, seeking to be awarded the attorneys' fees he incurred while litigating his case in federal court, as well as the attorneys fees related to the administrative proceedings he underwent. After careful consideration, we grant his petition in part and deny it in part.
The full history of this case is chronicled in the four prior opinions of this court and one opinion of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. See Castañeda-Castillo v. Gonzales, 464 F.3d 112 (1st Cir.2006) ("Castañeda I"); Castañeda-Castillo v. Gonzales, 488 F.3d 17 (1st Cir.2007) (en banc) ("Castañeda II"); United States v. Castañeda-Castillo, 739 F.Supp.2d 49 (D.Mass.2010) ("Castañeda III"); Castañeda-Castillo v. Holder, 638 F.3d 354 (1st Cir.2011) ("Castañeda IV");
Castañeda, a former lieutenant in the Peruvian army, was accused of taking part in the massacre of innocent villagers in Accomarca, Perú (the "Accomarca Massacre") in 1985, during the country's bloody struggle with the revolutionary Shining Path movement. Castañeda II, 488 F.3d at 19. Castañeda led one of the four patrols involved in the Accomarca operation but was three to five miles away from the massacre, id., and was not in any way involved in, or responsible for, the heinous actions of the larger force. Castañeda IV, 638 F.3d at 357; Castañeda II, 488 F.3d at 19. The Peruvian Senate Human Rights Commission investigated the events and determined that Castañeda's squad "was not involved in any confrontations with [the] fugitive civilians" who were killed. Castañeda II, 488 F.3d at 19. Despite this finding, Castañeda was charged with homicide and abuse of authority before a military tribunal, although said charges were ultimately dismissed. Castañeda V, 676 F.3d at 2. The dismissal was affirmed by the Supreme Council of Military Justice, Perú's highest court with jurisdiction over military justice matters. See id.; Castañeda III, 739 F.Supp.2d at 52.
In 1993, Castañeda filed the petition for asylum that gave rise to the instant saga. Castañeda V, 676 F.3d at 2.
Following remand, the IJ again denied Castañeda's application for asylum and withholding of removal, holding that (1) he had not met his burden of proving that he did not persecute others; (2) he had not established that he was persecuted on account of his membership in a particular social group or because of his political opinion; and (3) he had not established that he had an objectively reasonable fear of future persecution. Castañeda IV, 638 F.3d at 359. In May 2009, the BIA reversed the IJ as to point (1), concluding that there was insufficient evidence to support the IJ's finding that Castañeda had prior or contemporaneous knowledge of the Accomarca Massacre. Id. Nevertheless, the BIA upheld the IJ's decision as to points (2) and (3), reasoning that the Shining Path did not target Castañeda because he was a member of a particular social group — members of the military who were linked to the Accomarca Massacre — rather, they targeted him out of revenge for the massacre. Id. at 362-63. The BIA then found that Castañeda failed to prove that he had a genuine fear of future persecution were he to return to Perú and thus denied his application for asylum. Id. at 359.
In June 2009, Castañeda filed a petition for review of the BIA's ruling before this court (the "second petition for review"). Said petition gave rise to our decision in Castañeda IV, where we held that the BIA committed legal error when it reasoned that the Shining Path's vindictive motivation precluded a finding of persecution on account of a statutorily protected ground. Id. at 363. In light of the "ordinary remand rule," we sent the case back to the BIA for consideration of whether "Peruvian military officers whose names became associated with the Accomarca massacre" constituted a cognizable social group. Id. We emphasized, however, that the "unusually prolonged and convoluted history of this case prompt[ed] us to take the further step of retaining jurisdiction over Castañeda's appeal while the BIA addresses these issues on remand." Id.
On October 11, 2011, the BIA ruled that military officers linked to the Accomarca Massacre comprised a cognizable social group and that Castañeda suffered past persecution due to his membership in such a group. Castañeda V, 676 F.3d at 3. The case was remanded to the IJ so that she could determine whether the government could rebut the presumption that Castañeda harbored a well-founded fear of persecution if he were to return to Perú. Id. On February 6, 2012, an IJ granted asylum to Castañeda and his family, effectively laying to rest an application for asylum that had been pending for almost twenty years. Id.
Castañeda's legal battles, however, were not over. He returned to this court and filed a motion requesting that we enter a final judgment in his favor, noting that, in Castañeda IV, this court had elected to
In Castañeda V, we rejected that argument. 676 F.3d at 1. We explained that when we remanded this case to the BIA in Castañeda IV, we "explicitly retained jurisdiction for the express purpose of ensuring a speedy resolution of this case." Id. at 3. As such, we dismissed as moot the petition for review over which we had retained jurisdiction in Castañeda IV, and directed the clerk of the court to issue a final judgment in Castañeda's favor. Id. The clerk of the court entered said judgment on April 12, 2012, the same date that Castañeda V was decided.
During the pendency of Castañeda's second petition for review, on March 9, 2010, the government filed a request for the extradition of Castañeda to his native Perú. Castañeda III, 739 F.Supp.2d at 50. The request stemmed from the government of Perú's renewed decision to charge Castañeda with the crimes of aggravated murder, kidnapping and forced disappearance arising from the events surrounding the Accomarca Massacre. This request was the result of a change in Perú's government and the revocation of an amnesty law passed in 1995 which protected members of the military from further prosecution. Id. at 52. No effort was made to extradite Castañeda until five years after the new Peruvian government filed charges against him. Id. at 53. Nevertheless, the government argued before the federal district court in Massachusetts that Castañeda should be held in custody without bail until a determination of extraditability was made under 18 U.S.C. § 1834. Id. at 50. On August 17, 2010, the district court in Castañeda III granted Castañeda's request to be released on bail, finding that he had established special circumstances warranting such relief. Id. at 63-64. The government ultimately decided to voluntarily dismiss the extradition proceedings against Castañeda in April 2011.
Castañeda also filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with the district court on February 2010, noting that he had been detained by DHS for nearly four and a half years while he waited for his asylum application to be adjudicated, despite having no criminal history and not being subject to mandatory detention. Given the extradition request, Castañeda was transferred to the custody of the U.S. Marshal service, and the government moved for the dismissal of the habeas petition on the grounds that Castañeda had named the wrong custodian, presumably the DHS. However, as previously recounted, Castañeda ended up being released on bail on August 2010, in the context of his extradition proceeding.
Having dotted the tortured factual landscape, we now proceed to discuss Castañeda's petition for attorneys' fees.
On July 12, 2012, Castañeda filed the amended petition for attorneys' fees that is now before us.
In the United States, each party is usually required to bear its own attorneys' fees; "the prevailing party is not entitled to collect them from the loser." Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. W. Va. Dep't of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 598, 602, 121 S.Ct. 1835, 149 L.Ed.2d 855 (2001). The Equal Access to Justice Act ("EAJA"), 28 U.S.C. § 2412, is an exception to that rule. It provides in part that
28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A). The EAJA aims to "ensure that certain individuals... will not be deterred from seeking review of, or defending against, unjustified governmental action because of the expense involved." Aronov v. Napolitano, 562 F.3d 84, 88 (1st Cir.2009) (citing Scarborough v. Principi, 541 U.S. 401, 407, 124 S.Ct. 1856, 158 L.Ed.2d 674 (2004)). The Act "reduces the disparity in resources between individuals ... and the federal
The EAJA also mandates that a party seeking an award of attorneys' fees must submit his petition "within thirty days of final judgment in the action." 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(B). Consequently, in order for Castañeda to prove himself eligible for an award of attorneys' fees under the EAJA, he must establish (1) that he is the prevailing party in the civil action; (2) that his petition was timely filed; (3) that the government's position was not substantially justified; and (4) that no special circumstances make an award against the government unjust. Comm'r, I.N.S. v. Jean, 496 U.S. 154, 158, 110 S.Ct. 2316, 110 L.Ed.2d 134 (1990); Norris v. S.E.C., 695 F.3d 1261, 1264 (Fed.Cir.2012).
We now proceed to discuss whether Castañeda meets the four requirements listed above. We do so in turn.
The term "prevailing party," as used in the EAJA and other fee-shifting statutes, is a "legal term of art." Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 603, 121 S.Ct. 1835.
The government recognizes that Castañeda is the prevailing party in Castañeda II and Castañeda IV, but not in Castañeda V. It argues that our decision to issue a final judgment in Castañeda V did not confer upon Castañeda the status of prevailing party, because said decision did not effectively "rule on the merits" of Castañeda's second petition for review. The government stresses that this court had already ruled on the merits of such a petition in Castañeda IV, and that, following the remand ordered in that case, the immigration agencies had independent authority to grant Castañeda asylum. Once the decision was made by an IJ to grant Castañeda asylum, the argument goes, such decision did not depend on this court's judicial imprimatur or approval in the form of a final judgment. Therefore, the government argues that the parties' legal relationship remained the same both before and after we entered final judgment in Castañeda V, and that such judgment
Castañeda, for his part, argues that he is the prevailing party in each of the proceedings of Castañeda I, Castañeda II, Castañeda IV and Castañeda V. He claims that the government has mistakenly considered Castañeda IV and Castañeda V to be two separate cases, when in reality they are not, because this court did not issue a mandate after the Castañeda IV decision; instead, it decided to retain jurisdiction and refrain from terminating that proceeding.
We agree with Castañeda that he should be accorded prevailing party status with respect to Castañeda V. In reaching our conclusion, we have found instructive the Federal Circuit's ruling in Former Employees of Motorola Ceramic Products v. United States, 336 F.3d 1360 (Fed.Cir. 2003). There, a pair of employees who had been dismissed from their respective employments petitioned the Department of Labor (DOL) for benefits. Id. at 1362. The DOL denied their petitions and the employees sought review before the Court of International Trade (CIT). Id. The CIT found the DOL's decision to be erroneous and thus remanded the case back to the DOL for reconsideration, but retained jurisdiction over the proceedings during remand. Id. The employees were granted their benefits and afterwards filed an application for attorneys' fees pursuant to the EAJA. Id. at 1363. The CIT denied the petition, holding that its remand to the DOL did not constitute a judgment on the merits that afforded prevailing party status to the employees, and the employees appealed to the Federal Circuit. Id.
In order to determine whether the CIT's remand order to the DOL constituted relief on the merits, the Federal Circuit relied on the Supreme Court's holdings in Sullivan v. Hudson, 490 U.S. 877, 109 S.Ct. 2248, 104 L.Ed.2d 941 (1989) and Shalala v. Schaefer, 509 U.S. 292, 113 S.Ct. 2625, 125 L.Ed.2d 239 (1993), and distilled the following rule:
Former Emps., 336 F.3d at 1366.
In the case at bar, our remand order in Castañeda IV explicitly stated that we were to retain jurisdiction during the agency proceedings, due to the "unusually prolonged and convoluted history of this case." Castañeda IV, 638 F.3d at 363. There is no doubt that a material alteration of the relationship between the parties occurred when an IJ granted Castañeda his request for asylum. However, in order to become a prevailing party, there must have been a "judicial imprimatur" of that change. That imprimatur did not come until our decision in Castañeda V, when we acknowledged that "all factual and legal issues relating to Petitioners' eligibility for asylum [had] now been resolved in their favor by the administrative agency" and directed the clerk of the court to issue a final judgment. Castañeda V, 676 F.3d at 2. In essence, the final judgment we entered pursuant to Castañeda V is the final judgment "on the merits" we would have entered after deciding Castañeda IV, were it not for our decision to retain jurisdiction over the ensuing agency proceedings. In requesting that this court enter such a final judgment, Castañeda correctly attempted to comply with the strictures of the Buckhannon decision, which required him to secure a judgment on the merits or a court-approved settlement in order to be considered a prevailing party. 532 U.S. at 605-06, 121 S.Ct. 1835. He achieved the desired result and thus became a prevailing party once the final judgment was entered.
As can be seen, in arriving at this conclusion we have traveled down a similar path to the one followed in Former Employees, except that we consider that Castañeda only became a prevailing party when, per his request, we entered a final judgment pursuant to Castañeda V. We think this was a necessary step, given Buckhannon's requirement that there be a "judgment on the merits," id., and the Supreme Court's holding in Melkonyan v. Sullivan, 501 U.S. 89, 94, 111 S.Ct. 2157, 115 L.Ed.2d 78 (1991), that a "final judgment" under the EAJA "can only be the judgment of a court of law."
The government's second argument is that Castañeda's petition for attorneys' fees is untimely under 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(B). Said provision states that a proper application for attorneys' fees must be submitted "within thirty days of final judgment in the action." Id. A "final judgment" is defined by the EAJA as a judgment that is final and unappealable. Id. at § 2412(d)(2)(G). Castañeda notes that this court elected to retain jurisdiction after its decision to remand in Castañeda IV, which was decided on March 24, 2011. Following remand, Castañeda was able to prevail and obtain asylum in the immigration agencies, and he thus returned to this court requesting that we enter a final judgment in his favor. We entered such a final judgment, according to our own terms, on April 12, 2012, pursuant to our order in Castañeda V. Therefore, Castañeda argues that said judgment became a "final judgment," within the meaning of the EAJA, on July 11, 2012, when the period for seeking certiorari to the Supreme Court expired. See Sup. Ct. R. 13.1. The decision to remand in Castañeda IV, according to him, also became final and unappealable as of that date, because this court retained jurisdiction over his petition for review pending the completion of the post-remand administrative proceedings at the immigration agencies. Consequently, as he filed his amended petition for attorneys' fees the day after, on July 12, 2012, Castañeda claims he is well within the 30-day time period allowed by the EAJA.
In order to understand the government's argument, it is necessary to provide a brief summary of the specialized nature of judicial review of SSA agency determinations. In SSA cases, a district court reviewing a decision rendered by an SSA agency may only remand a case back to that agency under either sentence four or sentence six of section 405(g). See Melkonyan, 501 U.S. at 90, 111 S.Ct. 2157. Under sentence four of section 405(g), the district court must enter "a judgment, affirming, modifying, or reversing the decision of the Commissioner of Social Security, with or without remanding the cause for a rehearing," 42 U.S.C. § 405(g), whereas under sentence six, the district court "does not rule in any way as to the correctness of the administrative determination," but instead remands the case to the agency for further fact finding, Melkonyan, 501 U.S. at 98, 111 S.Ct. 2157.
The Supreme Court distinguished between sentence four and sentence six remand orders for the first time in Sullivan v. Finkelstein, 496 U.S. 617, 110 S.Ct. 2658, 110 L.Ed.2d 563 (1990). In Finkelstein, a case that did not concern the EAJA, the SSA agency had denied a widow's application for disability benefits, and the widow sought review in the district
A year after Finkelstein was decided came the Supreme Court's decision in Melkonyan, where the Court was faced with the question of whether an administrative decision rendered following a remand from a district court could be a "final judgment" within the meaning of the EAJA. The Court answered in the negative, holding that the "plain language [of the EAJA] makes clear that a `final judgment' under § 2412 can only be the judgment of a court of law." Melkonyan, 501 U.S. at 94, 111 S.Ct. 2157 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(B)). According to the Court, "[i]n sentence four [remand] cases, the [EAJA] filing period begins after the final judgment (`affirming, modifying, or reversing') is entered by the [district] court and the appeal period has run, so that the judgment is no longer appealable." Id. at 102, 111 S.Ct. 2157 (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 405(g) and citing 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(G)). On the other hand, the Court clarified that the EAJA filing period in sentence six remand cases "does not begin until after the post-remand proceedings are completed, the Secretary returns to court, the court enters a final judgment, and the appeal period runs." Id. The Court then concluded that "in § 405(g) actions, remand orders must either accompany a final judgment affirming, modifying or reversing the administrative decision in accordance with sentence four, or conform with the requirements outlined by Congress in sentence six." Id. at 101-02, 111 S.Ct. 2157 (emphasis added).
Two years later, in Schaefer, the Supreme Court reviewed an EAJA application for attorneys' fees filed after the district court remanded an SSA case pursuant to sentence four of section 405(g). Schaefer is significant because the district court in that case clarified that, although it was remanding the case under sentence four, it retained jurisdiction and planned to enter a final sentence four judgment after the completion
The government contends that Schaefer, as well as the other Supreme Court cases mentioned above, compels the conclusion that remands in the immigration context should be treated the same way as remands in the social security context. Particularly, the government posits that our remands to the BIA in Castañeda II and Castañeda IV are akin to the remands authorized under sentence four of section 405(g). It emphatically calls our attention to case law from the Third, Seventh and Ninth Circuits, holding that remands to the BIA in immigration cases are analogous to the sentence four remands at issue in the Supreme Court's SSA cases. See Johnson v. Gonzales, 416 F.3d 205, 209-10 (3d Cir.2005); Muhur v. Ashcroft, 382 F.3d 653, 654-55 (7th Cir.2004); Rueda-Menicucci v. I.N.S., 132 F.3d 493, 495 (9th Cir.1997). Therefore, the government contends that, if Castañeda wanted to recoup the attorneys' fees and expenses he incurred in Castañeda II and Castañeda IV, he should have filed his petition for attorneys' fees within 30 days after the judgments issued in those cases became final and unappealable, that is, by September 20, 2007, and July 22, 2011, respectively.
The decision to retain jurisdiction following our remand in Castañeda IV, the government posits, is inconsistent with the Supreme Court's definition of a "final judgment" under the EAJA. According to the government's reading of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence, this court had to enter a final judgment after deciding Castañeda IV, because our decision there effectively ruled "on the merits" of Castañeda's petition for review, vacated the decision of the administrative agency, and remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with the opinion. The government argues that, after this course of action, there was nothing left for this court to do but to relinquish jurisdiction and enter a judgment on the merits, as
The government goes on to argue that, despite this court's decision to retain jurisdiction over the post-remand proceedings in Castañeda IV, it would have been able to appeal the judgment in that case as a "final order" under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. According to the government, the final judgment we entered in Castañeda V cannot make the Castañeda IV judgment appealable again, as the former did not purport to reaffirm the latter's ruling on the merits. Therefore, we are urged to construe the judgment entered pursuant to Castañeda IV as a "final judgment" for purposes of the EAJA, once the time period for seeking certiorari before the Supreme Court expired.
Castañeda, for his part, argues that this court's remand in Castañeda IV should be construed as a sentence six remand, as opposed to a sentence four remand. He strenuously notes that this court elected to retain jurisdiction over the post-remand administrative proceedings following our decision in Castañeda IV, which according to him, effectively takes that remand outside of the purview of sentence four of section 405(g). Although he admits that sentence four requires a remanding court to relinquish jurisdiction over the matter and terminate the case on the merits, he points out that there is no similar provision in any of the statutes governing judicial review of immigration cases. The Third, Seventh and Ninth Circuit cases relied upon by the government, he also claims, are distinguishable from his case, because in those cases each court plainly relinquished jurisdiction over the case when it remanded to the BIA.
In addition, following a sentence six remand, the SSA agency is required to return to the district court and file any additional or modified findings of fact, as well as its decision adjudicating the merits of the petitioner's claims, so that the court may review it and enter a final judgment on it. Castañeda theorizes that we attempted to do something similar in our Castañeda IV remand order, because although we did not require the BIA to make any additional findings of fact, we did direct the parties to file joint status reports on the progress of the administrative proceedings every sixty days. Castañeda claims that he expected to continue filing said reports until a final decision was reached at the immigration agencies, at which time he would file said decision with this court so that we could enter a final judgment on it, as required by sentence eight of section 405(g). Therefore, Castañeda urges us to treat the remand ordered in Castañeda IV as a sentence six remand, and the judgment entered pursuant to Castañeda V as a "final judgment" for EAJA purposes, once the period for seeking certiorari to the Supreme Court expired.
We have not had the opportunity to consider the issue of what constitutes a final judgment for EAJA purposes when a court of appeals remands an immigration case for further administrative proceedings while retaining jurisdiction over those proceedings. The government here invites us to equate judicial remand orders in the immigration context with remand orders in the social security context. Particularly, the government urges us to apply the sentence four — sentence six remand dichotomy to remands undertaken in the immigration context. We, however, find it difficult to accept the government's invitation in this regard.
8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(1).
The Hobbs Act, which is incorporated by the provision above, sets out the jurisdiction of the courts of appeals in reviewing agency orders. See 28 U.S.C. § 2349(a).
In any event, the parties' assertion that we could, in theory, remand an immigration case using a sentence-six-style remand is troublesome. As already discussed, under sentence six of section 405(g), a district court "may at any time order additional evidence to be taken before the Commissioner of Social Security." 42 U.S.C. § 405(g). However, remanding a case to an immigration agency with the purpose of having it collect additional evidence, at least at the behest of a petitioner, appears to be prohibited under a plain reading of section 242 of the INA, which states that "the court may not order the taking of additional evidence under section 2347(c) of [Title 28]." 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(1); see also I.N.S. v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289,
This is not to say that the government's argument is entirely without merit. We must recognize that the Third, Seventh and Ninth circuits have expressed a willingness to equate remands to the BIA in the immigration context with the sentence four remands featured in the social security context. But as Castañeda correctly points out, the remands at issue in those cases were ordered with a concomitant relinquishment of jurisdiction by the court. See, e.g., Johnson, 416 F.3d at 209-10 ("[The court of appeals] entered judgment in [petitioner's] favor and relinquished jurisdiction.") (emphasis added). Consequently, those circuits had no trouble likening those remands to the sentence four remands existing in the social security context. The fact remains that we have no way of knowing how those circuits would have ruled had the courts in those cases decided to retain jurisdiction over the post-remand proceedings.
Conversely, in our decision in Castañeda IV, we cited to cases from the Second and Seventh Circuits to support our authority to retain jurisdiction over the post-remand proceedings. See Ucelo-Gómez v. Gonzales, 464 F.3d 163, 172 (2d Cir.2006) (directing the BIA to issue an opinion responsive to the limited remand within forty-nine days, and retaining jurisdiction in the interim), Asani v. I.N.S., 154 F.3d 719, 725 (7th Cir.1998)(retaining jurisdiction during a limited remand to the BIA to determine whether, inter alia, changed circumstances in the petitioner's home country supported a finding of a well-founded fear of future persecution); and Yang v. McElroy, 277 F.3d 158, 164 (2d Cir.2002). Therefore, there is countervailing authority, at least from the Second and Seventh Circuits, that effectively undermines the government's position that we lacked the authority to retain jurisdiction in Castañeda IV.
What's more, the law of the case doctrine governs on this issue. In Castañeda V, we explicitly rejected the government's argument that we were without authority to enter a final judgment terminating the proceedings. Chi. & N.W. Transp. Co. v. United States, 574 F.2d 926, 929 (7th Cir. 1978) ("Appellate reconsideration of issues
Based on the foregoing, we reject both the government's argument that we should treat the remand order in Castañeda IV as a sentence four remand, and Castañeda's argument that we should treat said remand as a sentence six remand. We agree with Castañeda, though, that the remand order in Castañeda IV is entirely distinguishable from the remands at issue in the cases decided by the Second, Seventh and Ninth Circuits. Accordingly, we hold that said remand should not be construed as a sentence four remand, and that the final judgment entered pursuant to Castañeda V should be treated as a "final judgment" under the EAJA, once the period for seeking certiorari before the Supreme Court expired. Since that occurred on July 11, 2012, and Castañeda filed his petition for attorneys' fees the day after, we deem that said petition is timely as to the proceedings that led to our decisions in Castañeda IV and Castañeda V.
Castañeda also seeks an award for the attorneys' fees he incurred during the proceedings that led to our earlier decisions in Castañeda I and II, arguing those fees may be included alongside the ones expended in Castañeda IV and V.
Castañeda argues that requiring him to have filed two different petitions for attorneys' fees would be "wasteful, needlessly time consuming for the judicial system" and would "belie[] the underlying purpose of the EAJA, and def[y] a common sense approach to litigating EAJA claims." His argument here mainly rests on two cases: (1) the Supreme Court's decision in Jean, 496 U.S. 154, 110 S.Ct. 2316, and (2) the Second Circuit's decision in Gómez-Beleno v. Holder, 644 F.3d 139 (2d Cir.2011). Specifically, Castañeda relies on language from Jean, where the Court stated that "the EAJA — like other fee-shifting statutes — favors treating a case as an inclusive whole, rather than as atomized line-items." 496 U.S. at 161-62, 110 S.Ct. 2316. He argues that treating a case "as an inclusive whole" means treating both of his petitions for review as a single civil action under the EAJA, which in turn warrants finding his EAJA petition timely with respect to the fees incurred in Castañeda I and II.
We think Castañeda reads Jean too broadly. Said case did not involve a petitioner who was seeking a fee award for multiple petitions for review; rather, the issue at stake in Jean was whether a prevailing party could be barred from recovering the attorneys' fees it incurred during the fee litigation stage of the proceedings, if the government is able to prove that its position during that specific stage was substantially justified. 496 U.S. at 156, 110 S.Ct. 2316. The Court answered that question in the negative, holding that the EAJA's "substantial justification" requirement is a "single finding that ... operates as a one-time threshold for fee eligibility." Id. at 160, 110 S.Ct. 2316. Therefore, the decision in Jean, which went more to the EAJA's "substantial justification" requirement, rather than its statute of limitations, does not help Castañeda in this regard.
Castañeda also relies on Gómez-Beleno, where the Second Circuit treated two separate petitions for review as a single civil action for purposes of attorneys' fees under the EAJA. The court allowed the prevailing party in that case to recover the fees expended in both proceedings, even though the EAJA filing period for the first petition for review had already passed. The court in Gómez-Beleno, however, made it clear that the government did not argue that the two petitions for review in that case should have been treated as separate civil actions, and thus the argument was deemed to have been forfeited. 644 F.3d at 145 n. 3.
As previously discussed, we do not agree that Jean should be read as broadly as Castañeda and the Second Circuit seem to suggest. In addition, the Second Circuit may have ruled otherwise had the government decided to take up the issue. Instead, we find ourselves favoring the approach taken by the Third, Seventh and Ninth Circuits in Johnson, Muhur and Rueda-Menicucci, respectively, where those courts held that a judgment remanding a case to the BIA for further proceedings constitutes a final judgment for purposes of the EAJA's statute of limitations. The remands featured in those cases are exactly like the remand we ordered in Castañeda II; they were all issued after the circuit court reversed the BIA's erroneous denial of an asylum application and they were entered without the concomitant retention of jurisdiction that characterized our remand order in Castañeda IV. As such, we conclude that the judgment we entered pursuant to Castañeda II should be construed as a final judgment for EAJA purposes, once the period for seeking certiorari before the Supreme Court had expired. Since Castañeda did not file an EAJA petition to recoup the fees expended in those proceedings, his current application must be denied as to those fees.
Our conclusion in this regard is further reinforced by the statutory language of the EAJA, its legislative history and common sense. The EAJA states that "[a] party seeking an award of fees and other expenses shall, within thirty days of final judgment in the action, submit an application for fees...." 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(B) (emphasis added). The Supreme Court has noted that the word "shall" ordinarily connotes an intention by Congress "to impose discretionless obligations." López v. Davis, 531 U.S. 230, 241, 121 S.Ct. 714, 148 L.Ed.2d 635 (2001); Lexecon Inc. v. Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, 523 U.S. 26, 35, 118 S.Ct. 956, 140 L.Ed.2d 62 (1998) ("[T]he mandatory `shall' ... normally creates an obligation impervious to judicial discretion."); Anderson v. Yungkau, 329 U.S. 482, 485, 67 S.Ct. 428, 91 L.Ed. 436 (1947) (the term "shall" is "ordinarily [t]he language of command" (internal quotation marks omitted)). But see Gutiérrez de Martínez v. Lamagno, 515 U.S. 417, 432-33 n. 9, 115 S.Ct. 2227, 132 L.Ed.2d 375 (1995) ("Though `shall' generally means `must,' legal writers sometimes use, or misuse, `shall' to mean `should,' `will,' or even `may.'"). Given that the EAJA is a partial waiver of the government's sovereign immunity, and so must be strictly construed in favor of the government, Ardestani, 502 U.S. at 137, 112 S.Ct. 515, and that we have described the EAJA's filing period as jurisdictional, Tyler, 990 F.2d at 30, we find that the word "shall" in this context means "must." See also Aronov, 562 F.3d
Our holding is also driven by a desire to avoid confusion for parties and legal counsel engaged in litigating petitions for review such as the ones at issue here. Suppose that Castañeda had actually prevailed in the immigration agencies following our remand in Castañeda II. Most likely, his award of asylum would have been entered after the EAJA filing period for the Castañeda II judgment had passed. Castañeda would have thus found himself in a position where he could not recover the fees expended during the judicial proceedings leading up to Castañeda II, nor the fees expended during the subsequent post-remand administrative proceedings. He could not have tethered his EAJA petition to the IJ's order granting him asylum, because said order would not qualify as a "final judgment" under the EAJA. See Melkonyan, 501 U.S. at 94, 111 S.Ct. 2157 (stating that "a `final judgment' under [the EAJA] can only be the judgment of a court of law."). Nor could he have relied on 5 U.S.C. § 504, a provision of the EAJA that allows prevailing parties to recover the fees incurred during administrative proceedings, because said provision does not apply to proceedings governed by the INA. See Ardestani, 502 U.S. at 137, 112 S.Ct. 515 (concluding that administrative immigration proceedings do not fall under 5 U.S.C. § 504).
One can easily see how adopting Castañeda's argument in this regard may leave similarly situated litigants at a dead end with respect to attorneys' fees if they fail to file a fee petition following a Castañeda II-type judgment and subsequently become prevailing parties at the agency level. Our holding here is meant to provide a clear time frame for filing a petition for attorneys' fees under the EAJA in the immigration context, and to avoid any confusion among the parties as to that time frame.
In summary, we find that we are without jurisdiction to award Castañeda the attorneys' fees he seeks with respect to Castañeda I and II. His petition is thus denied as to those fees.
Before delving into the issue of whether the government's position was substantially justified, we must pause to address Castañeda's arguments that he is entitled to an award for the fees he incurred during the administrative proceedings that followed Castañeda II and Castañeda IV, as well as the ones incurred during his habeas corpus and extradition proceedings. We begin by analyzing whether he is eligible to recover the fees he incurred in the post-remand administrative proceedings that followed Castañeda IV.
Castañeda seeks an award for the attorneys' fees he incurred during the post-remand administrative proceedings that took place after Castañeda IV. As previously
In Hudson, a SSA case decided before Finkelstein, Melkonyan and Schaefer, the district court carried out a sentence four remand to the SSA agency, while retaining jurisdiction over the ensuing administrative proceedings. The petitioner was able to prevail on remand and subsequently filed an EAJA application for attorneys' fees with the district court, where, inter alia, he sought to recover the fees he incurred during the post-remand administrative proceedings. The Hudson court held that petitioner could recover such fees, and it established the following rule:
490 U.S. at 892, 109 S.Ct. 2248. The Court explained that certain qualifying administrative proceedings are "so intimately connected with judicial proceedings as to be considered part of the `civil action' for purposes of a fee award." Id. Those qualifying classes of administrative proceedings were defined by the Court to be those "where `a suit has been brought in a court,' and where `a formal complaint within the jurisdiction of a court of law' remains pending and depends for its resolution upon the outcome of the administrative proceedings." Id.
Evidently, the holding in Hudson turned out to be at odds with later Supreme Court cases regarding sentence four remands, as Hudson sanctioned a district court's use of a sentence four remand while retaining jurisdiction over the post-remand agency proceedings. Recall that in Finkelstein, the Court held that a district court may not effectuate a sentence four remand while simultaneously retaining jurisdiction over the post-remand proceedings. 496 U.S. at 624-25, 110 S.Ct. 2658. The Justices recognized this incongruity in Schaefer and thus decided to narrow the scope of Hudson, writing that they no longer "consider[ed] the holding of Hudson binding as to sentence-four remands that are ordered (as they should be) without retention of jurisdiction, or that are ordered with retention of jurisdiction that is challenged." Schaefer, 509 U.S. at 300, 113 S.Ct. 2625.
The government argues that Hudson is now binding only as to sentence six remands where a court "does not rule in any way as to the correctness of the administrative determination," and remands the case to the agency for further fact-finding. Since Castañeda IV was not a sentence six remand, the argument goes, Castañeda may not rely on Hudson to recover the fees incurred in the post-remand administrative proceedings that followed that decision. This narrow reading of Hudson is mistaken.
Although the Court in Schaefer, in a footnote, stated that "Hudson remains good law as applied to remands ordered
What's left is that we are remitted to apply the factors enumerated in Hudson to determine whether the administrative proceedings conducted after Castañeda IV are so "intimately related" to the judicial proceedings in that case so as to be considered part of the same "civil action." We conclude that the remand order in Castañeda IV squares nicely with the "qualifying administrative proceedings" outlined in Hudson. The qualifying class of administrative proceedings were defined by the Court to be those "where `a suit has been brought in a court,' and where `a formal complaint within the jurisdiction of a court of law' remains pending and depends for its resolution upon the outcome of the administrative proceedings." 490 U.S. at 892, 109 S.Ct. 2248. In Castañeda IV, a petition for review was brought before the court, and that petition for review remained pending due to our decision to remand the case back to the BIA while retaining jurisdiction over the petition. Had Castañeda failed to obtain relief before the immigration agencies, his petition for review before this court would have been reactivated, without the need for Castañeda to file a new petition. And had Castañeda prevailed at the agencies below, he still would have had to return to this court to seek a final judgment disposing of the petition for review. Therefore, the petition for review depended on the outcome of the administrative proceedings on remand for its resolution.
Additionally, when Castañeda IV was decided, Castañeda's application for asylum had been pending for almost twenty years and had already been addressed by two panels of this court, as well as an en banc panel. By that point, we had already provided ample guidance to the immigration agencies so that they could evaluate Castañeda's asylum claims. This, coupled with our decision to retain jurisdiction over the post-remand proceedings in Castañeda IV, as well as our directive ordering the parties to file periodic status reports on the progress of those proceedings, warrants finding that they were now "intimately related" with the judicial proceedings that book-ended them in Castañeda IV and Castañeda V. Consequently, we conclude that Castañeda is eligible to recover the fees incurred during the post-remand agency proceedings that followed our remand order in Castañeda IV.
In addition to requesting attorneys' fees for the agency proceedings that followed our decision in Castañeda IV, Castañeda also seeks fees for the earlier agency proceedings that followed our decision in Castañeda II. However, since we have determined that Castañeda's fee application is
Castañeda also seeks an award of attorneys' fees with respect to the habeas corpus and extradition proceedings that took place in the district court. He argues that the legal representation he received in those proceedings contributed to his ultimate victory in the asylum proceedings, and, as such, he should be able to include them in his fee application. The government, for its part, argues that the EAJA precludes us from awarding fees incurred in proceedings over which we exercised no jurisdiction. In this regard, the government is correct.
The EAJA states that "a court shall award to a prevailing party ... fees and other expenses ... incurred by that party in any civil action ... in any court having jurisdiction over that action...." 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A). It follows that, "[i]n order for a court to award fees under the EAJA, it must have jurisdiction over the underlying action." Zambrano v. I.N.S., 282 F.3d 1145, 1149-50 (9th Cir. 2002); Lundin v. Mecham, 980 F.2d 1450, 1461 (D.C.Cir.1992) (affirming general rule that "a court may not award fees under EAJA for work performed in other jurisdictions"); Lane v. United States, 727 F.2d 18, 20-21 (1st Cir.1984). It is therefore clear that we may not award Castañeda the fees he incurred in the habeas corpus and extradition proceedings, because we never exercised jurisdiction over them.
The cases cited to by Castañeda, Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983) and Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air, 478 U.S. 546, 106 S.Ct. 3088, 92 L.Ed.2d 439 (1986), are immaterial to the issue at hand, because neither of those two cases dealt with the EAJA. Additionally, in Hensley, the district court had jurisdiction over the proceedings at issue, and in Delaware Valley, the Supreme Court awarded petitioner the fees it incurred in certain administrative proceedings, because participation in those proceedings was necessary to vindicate the petitioner's rights under a consent decree issued by the district court. Since neither case assists Castañeda, we must deny his petition as to the fees incurred in the habeas corpus and extradition proceedings.
Having determined that Castañeda is eligible to recover the fees incurred in Castañeda IV, the administrative proceedings that followed, Castañeda V, and the current fee litigation, our inquiry now shifts to whether the government's position during those proceedings was substantially justified. See 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A). According to Jean, this entails making a single finding that will operate as a clear threshold for determining Castañeda's fee eligibility. 496 U.S. at
It is well-settled that the government bears the burden of establishing that its position was substantially justified. See Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 565, 108 S.Ct. 2541, 101 L.Ed.2d 490 (1988); Dantran, Inc. v. U.S. Dep't of Labor, 246 F.3d 36, 41 (1st Cir.2001). The government needs to satisfy this burden by a preponderance of the evidence, Dantran, 246 F.3d at 41, and it must justify the positions it took both during the litigation and the agency proceedings that preceded that litigation, Schock v. United States, 254 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.2001). These positions must have a reasonable basis in both law and fact. Jean v. United States, 396 F.3d 449, 455 (1st Cir.2005).
In its opposition to Castañeda's application for attorneys' fees, the government only attempts to justify its position during the proceedings that led up to our decision in Castañeda II. In contrast, the government makes no attempt to justify its position during any of the proceedings for which Castañeda is eligible to recover fees, namely, the litigation that took place from Castañeda IV to Castañeda V. Given the government's failure in this regard, we conclude that its arguments as to the substantial justification issue are waived. See United States v. Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir.1990) ("[I]ssues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are deemed waived.").
In any event, the government would face an uphill battle arguing that its position in those proceedings was substantially justified. As previously recounted, in Castañeda IV, the government did not defend the BIA's decision on the merits; rather, it only argued that Castañeda's asylum petition should be held in abeyance pending the outcome of his extradition proceedings. Although there are instances where a procedural argument that could affect our disposition of an appeal may be "substantially justified," it is clear to us that the procedural arguments raised by the government during Castañeda IV were not substantially justified. First, the government claimed that the case should have been held in abeyance because the BIA had a "policy" — announced in Matter of Pérez-Jiménez, 10 I. & N. Dec. 309 (BIA 1963) — of holding asylum applications in abeyance where there was a pending extradition attempt. However, as we pointed out in Castañeda IV, the BIA itself had explicitly declined to apply the Pérez-Jiménez rule to Castañeda when the government had previously petitioned the BIA to hold his petition in abeyance.
Second, the government argued that ruling on the asylum petition before the extradition proceedings were resolved would unduly interfere with foreign policy. We concluded, however, that the government offered little to support this argument beyond "vague hand-waving about the nature of [] unspecified foreign policy consequences." Castañeda IV, 638 F.3d at 360. We also noted that an asylum application had no preclusive effect whatsoever on an extradition proceeding. Moreover, the government conceded that, even if Castañeda were granted asylum, it would still be within the discretion of the Secretary of State to extradite him to Perú.
In sum, even if the government had adequately briefed the issue of whether its position was substantially justified, we would have no trouble ruling in favor of Castañeda in this regard. Castañeda thus merits being awarded attorneys' fees for each of the proceedings listed above.
The government has not argued that there are any special circumstances which would make an award of fees against it unjust, and neither are we able to discern any. In fact, we believe the circumstances of this case actually militate in favor of granting Castañeda an award of attorneys' fees.
Consequently, we will now saunter over to the next issue: how to calculate Castañeda's award of attorneys' fees.
The parties vigorously joust over how to calculate Castañeda's fee award, with Castañeda naturally wanting to increase the hourly rate for his attorneys' work while the government seeks to reduce it based on several alleged deficiencies in the fee application. Additionally, the government claims that Castañeda's fee award should be reduced because he unreasonably protracted the proceedings that led to his award of asylum. We begin by addressing Castañeda's argument that he should be awarded an enhanced fee for his attorneys' performance in this case.
Castañeda seeks to recover fees at a rate of $450 per hour for the work performed by his lead attorney, Mr. William Joyce, and $275 per hour for the work of Mr. Joyce's associates. Castañeda also petitions for fees at a rate of $130 per hour for paralegals and $100 per hour for law clerks, both of whom worked on his case. He claims these rates are in line with the prevailing market rates for immigration attorneys in the Boston area.
The EAJA, however, caps awards of attorneys' fees at a rate of $125 per hour. 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(A). This statutory ceiling is generally "designed to hold down the government's costs by providing modest compensation, with exceptions." Atl. Fish Spotters Ass'n v. Daley, 205 F.3d 488, 491 (1st Cir.2001). A court may only award fees beyond the statutory maximum if it "determines that an increase in the cost of living or a special factor, such as the limited availability of qualified attorneys for the proceedings involved, justifies a higher fee." 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(A). The Supreme Court has expanded on the "limited availability of qualified attorneys" exception, writing that
Pierce, 487 U.S. at 572, 108 S.Ct. 2541. The question thus becomes whether Castañeda's attorneys possessed some "distinctive knowledge" or "specialized skill" that was necessary to litigate the claims at stake during Castañeda IV, the administrative proceedings that followed, and Castañeda V. If we answer this question in the affirmative, then we must examine whether, in the case at hand, Castañeda could have found similarly qualified lawyers elsewhere in the market for $125 or less. See Atl. Fish Spotters, 205 F.3d at 492. To begin with, Castañeda argues that his attorneys deserve an enhanced award because they have been mired in particularly "lengthy and complex litigation" which required
In support of these assertions, Castañeda has included with his fee application several affidavits subscribed by his counsel, where they describe their ample experience in deportation defense and the convoluted nature of this case. Castañeda also attached the affidavit of Mr. Harvey Kaplan, an experienced immigration attorney who is a partner at a Boston immigration firm, and who attests to Mr. Joyce's ample experience and the complicated nature of this case. He also asserts that the rates requested for Mr. Joyce and his associates are "at or below the prevailing market rate for the period of 2005-2012 for attorneys of their respective experience levels involved in highly specialized litigation."
Having reviewed Castañeda's submissions, we find that he has failed to establish that his attorneys possessed some "specialized skill" or "distinctive knowledge" needful for the litigation in question. Although Castañeda does convince us that representing him required a herculean effort from his counsel in staying the course and persevering until the end — given the two-decades' long proceedings, his years of imprisonment, and the adverse determinations that were repeatedly made against him — he does not explain how "distinctive knowledge" or "specialized skill" was necessary to represent him during the specific proceedings at issue here. Instead, Castañeda stresses the complexity and interdependence of all of the proceedings he underwent as a whole, emphasizing that very few attorneys in the immigration bar are equipped to litigate an immigration case at the administrative level while also "competently handling multi-faceted federal litigation," including the habeas corpus and extradition proceedings he faced. We, however, cannot avow Castañeda's holistic approach because the EAJA requires us to focus on whether Castañeda's attorneys possessed some "specialized skill needful for the litigation in question." Pierce, 487 U.S. at 572, 108 S.Ct. 2541 (emphasis added). In this case, we have already determined that "the litigation in question" must be confined to the proceedings that sprouted from his second petition for review, i.e., the proceedings that led to our decision in Castañeda IV, the "intimately related" administrative proceedings that followed, and the Castañeda V proceedings.
As to those proceedings, particularly the litigation in Castañeda IV, Castañeda argues his attorneys made the "unprecedented" argument that, "contrary to the application of established BIA case law, there should be no per se bar on asylum claims for refugees simply because of their employment in the military or police forces in their country of origin." He claims this argument "was not straightforward" and "required a highly nuanced application of statutory, regulatory and case law." But the Supreme Court has determined that factors such as the "novelty and difficulty of issues, the undesirability of the case [and] the work and ability of counsel" do not, by themselves, merit awarding fees beyond the statutory cap. Pierce, 487 U.S. at 573, 108 S.Ct. 2541 (internal quotation marks omitted).
Furthermore, in Castañeda IV, the main issues were whether Castañeda's petition
We also do not see how any "special skill" or "distinctive knowledge," apart from that obtained by immigration lawyers pursuant to their general experience, was necessary to prevail in Castañeda IV. As Castañeda does not set forth any similar arguments with respect to the administrative proceedings that followed Castañeda IV or the proceedings in Castañeda V, we find that he is not entitled to an award of enhanced fees under the EAJA's "special factor" provision.
The above is not the end of the matter, however, as the EAJA also provides for enhanced fees based on an increase in the cost of living. 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(A). Castañeda thus makes the alternative argument that the $125-per-hour cap established by Congress in March of 1996 should be adjusted to reflect the increase in the cost of living that has occurred since then, particularly in the Boston area. He relies on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Given that the government does not oppose Castañeda's request for a cost-of-living adjustment, or that said adjustment be computed based on the regional, as opposed to national, CPI, we find that Castañeda is eligible for the requested enhancement. See Sierra Club v. Sec'y of Army, 820 F.2d 513, 523 (1st Cir.1987) ("[F]ederal courts remain able to augment hourly rates by considering changes in the cost of living...."). We therefore adjust the $125 statutory cap to reflect the increase in the cost of living experienced in the Boston-Brockton-Nashua geographic area since March of 1996, as established by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Annual Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (CPI-U) in this area, for the month of March in 1996, was 162.8.
Moving on, Castañeda requests hourly rates of $130 for paralegals and $100 for law clerks. He relies on Mr. Kaplan's affidavit in claiming that such rates are in accordance with the prevailing market rates for immigration firms in the Boston area. The government opposes the request, arguing that Castañeda has not advanced sufficient evidence to prove that those rates are in fact comparable to the prevailing market rates. It notes that Mr. Joyce's affidavit does not attest to the rates charged by the paralegals and law clerks who worked on the case and that the case law cited by Castañeda in the alternative instead supports rates of $90 and $60 per hour, respectively, in the Boston area. The government seems to have the better argument in this regard.
In Richlin Security Service Co. v. Chertoff, 553 U.S. 571, 128 S.Ct. 2007, 170 L.Ed.2d 960 (2008), the Supreme Court held that the EAJA allows a prevailing party to recover fees incurred for paralegal services at the market rate for such services.
The government is correct in pointing out that none of Castañeda's attorneys attest to the rates charged by Mr. Joyce's firm for paralegal and law clerk services in their affidavits. Although Mr. Kaplan states that "the rates requested for paralegals ($130) and law clerks ($100), are also in accord with prevailing market rates for immigration litigation firms in Boston," some recent district court cases from Massachusetts suggest that rates of $100 for paralegals and $75 for law clerks are more in line with current market trends. See Rogers v. Cofield, ___ F.Supp.2d ___, ___, 2013 WL 1325034, at *21 (D.Mass. March 31, 2013) (finding a $100 hourly rate for paralegal work reasonable); Ferraro v. Kelley, 2011 WL 576074 at *6 (D.Mass. Feb. 8, 2011) (finding a $90 rate for paralegals to be "in the ball park of rates approved recently for paralegals in this District."); Walsh v. Boston Univ., 661 F.Supp.2d 91, 113 (D.Mass.2009) (finding that a $75 hourly rate is "in line with rates approved for legal interns"); Hudson v. Dennehy, 568 F.Supp.2d 125, 133 (D.Mass. 2008) (finding prevailing market rates for paralegals during 2007-2008 to be $100 per hour). Accordingly, we find that Castañeda should be awarded fees for paralegals
We now consider whether the government is correct in claiming that Castañeda's fee award must be reduced because (1) he unreasonably protracted the proceedings; (2) his fee application does not appear to consist of contemporaneous time records; (3) his fee application contains excessive or duplicative time entries; (4) he did not prevail in his claim for an enhanced fee award; and (5) his statement of costs is defective. We discuss these arguments in turn.
The government argues that Castañeda's fee award must be reduced because he "unreasonably protracted the litigation in Castañeda [IV] by opposing the government's request for a voluntary remand." It relies on 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(C), which allows courts to reduce or deny an award of attorneys' fees if the prevailing party, during the course of the proceedings, "engaged in conduct which unduly and unreasonably protracted the final resolution of the matter in controversy." Following Castañeda's second petition for review of the BIA's May 2009 decision, the government notes it filed a motion to voluntarily remand the case to the BIA so that the Board could further evaluate whether Castañeda had established the requisite nexus component of his asylum claim. This court provisionally denied the motion on May 20, 2010 and ordered the parties to brief the merits of Castañeda's petition for review. Notwithstanding, the government faults Castañeda for opposing the motion, arguing that he delayed the resolution of his claims and as a result incurred unnecessary fees and expenses. We strenuously disagree.
The government's three-page motion to remand was based almost exclusively on the case of Sompotan v. Mukasey, 533 F.3d 63 (1st Cir.2008), which dealt with the nexus requirement in a pre-REAL ID Act case. However, as we explained in Castañeda V, Sompotan "simply re-stated well-settled law and pre-dated the BIA's [May 2009] decision" 676 F.3d at 3. Moreover, when the government sought remand, Castañeda's petition for asylum had been pending for approximately seventeen years, the last four and a half of which he had spent in the DHS' custody, despite an administrative determination that he was not a danger to the community nor a flight risk. It is therefore perplexing for us to think that Castañeda would voluntarily choose to delay the resolution of his own claims, given the precarious situation in which he found himself. Instead, we find that the immigration agencies' repeatedly erroneous determinations, as well as the government's initiation of the extradition proceedings against Castañeda and its repeated opposition to his release on bail are what caused the delay inherent in these proceedings and the substantial petition for attorneys' fees that is now before this court.
We therefore reject the government's contention that Castañeda unduly protracted the proceedings in this case.
The government also attacks the fee schedule submitted by Castañeda, arguing that it does not appear to consist of contemporaneously-kept time records. Instead, the government suggests that "the summaries of the hours expended appear to be a reconstruction of the time records in this case." It relies on the case of Grendel's Den, Inc. v. Larkin, 749 F.2d 945,
Pursuant to the EAJA, an application for fees must include "the amount sought, including an itemized statement from any attorney ... stating the actual time expended and the rate at which fees and other expenses were computed." 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(B); see also Local Rule 39.1. This itemized statement must be a "full and specific accounting" of the tasks performed, including "the dates of performance, and the number of hours spent on each task" as well as a description of the nature of the tasks. Weinberger v. Great N. Nekoosa Corp., 925 F.2d 518, 527 (1st Cir.1991). The statement must also consist of "detailed contemporaneous time records" explaining how time was spent on each claim in the case. Grendel's Den, 749 F.2d at 952; Hensley, 461 U.S. at 437, 103 S.Ct. 1933. Contemporaneous time records serve not only as evidence that the "time claimed was indeed so spent, but [also] provide details about the work.... [t]his allows the paying party to dispute the accuracy of the record as well as the reasonableness of the time spent." Calhoun v. Acme Cleveland Corp., 801 F.2d 558, 560 (1st Cir. 1986). Records that include the different tasks each attorney performed, the total number of hours billed, the billing rate for those hours, the date on which each tasks was performed, and the amount of time spent on each task generally fulfill this requirement. Id. at 560.
Having reviewed the time records submitted by Castañeda, we are confident that they satisfy the strictures set forth above. The records are divided according to the attorney, paralegal or law clerk that worked on the case, and their time entries are classified according to the year in which they were performed. Further, each time entry lists a general description of the task, such as "Prepared for oral argument before the First Circuit" or "Drafted motion for expedited bond hearing," as well as the date on which each was performed. Each task also lists the hours that were allotted to it, and the rate at which those hours were billed. Therefore, we find that the records in this case are sufficiently detailed to allow the government to "dispute the accuracy of the records as well as the reasonableness of the time spent." See Lipsett v. Blanco, 975 F.2d 934, 938 (1st Cir.1992); Hensley, 461 U.S. at 437, 103 S.Ct. 1933 ("[C]ounsel ... is not required to record in great detail how each minute of his time was expended [but] at least counsel should identify the general subject matter of his time expenditures."); Gay Officers Action League v. Puerto Rico, 247 F.3d 288, 297 (1st Cir. 2001) (stating that while it is required to keep detailed contemporaneous records, compilations that accurately reflect the records and simplify the presentation of data may be accepted by the courts instead of the original records). In fact, the government has launched challenges to the reasonableness of the hours allotted to certain tasks, and we proceed to analyze these objections in the following section.
The government objects to the reasonableness of several of the time entries made by Castañeda's attorneys, claiming that they are either excessive or duplicative. However, most of these challenges
The government contends that two attorneys were not necessary to adequately represent Castañeda at these hearings. It also claims that four hours is an excessive amount of time to argue a case before this court "inasmuch as the arguments did not take up more than a small fraction of that time." The government thus suggests that these hours include travel time, which should not be billed at the full attorney rate. We disagree with the government and find the time entries above to be reasonable.
Fee awards are not intended "to serve as full employment or continuing education programs for lawyers and paralegals." Lipsett, 975 F.2d at 938 (1st Cir.1992). We have already emphasized that the assignment of multiple attorneys to a single set of tasks should be regarded with "healthy skepticism," and that "staffing issues are often best resolved by the [] court's application of its intimate, first-hand knowledge of a particular case's nuances and idiosyncracies." Id. We have added that "[t]ime spent by two attorneys on the same general task is not ... per se duplicative" since "[c]areful preparation often requires collaboration and rehearsal," especially in response to complex legal issues that are fiercely defended. Rodríguez-Hernández v. Miranda-Vélez, 132 F.3d 848, 860 (1st Cir.1998); Hutchinson ex rel. Julien v. Patrick, 636 F.3d 1, 14 (1st Cir.2011) ("[P]arties sometimes are justified in making a strategic choice to use teams of lawyers in various phases of complex litigation").
We hold that Ms. Endy's presence at oral argument and at the hearing before IJ Feder was not unnecessarily duplicative, given the complicated nature of the case and the serious ramifications the outcome of the hearings had on Castañeda's future. On September 13, 2010, for example, Castañeda not only faced the impeding threat of deportation, but he was also the target of the government's efforts to extradite him to Perú, where he would again be charged for his role in the Accomarca Massacre. Moreover, it is understandable that both Mr. Joyce and Ms. Endy attended the hearing; Ms. Endy clocked almost twice the number of hours on the case compared to Mr. Joyce, and no doubt she was more familiarized with the case and thus could have provided valuable assistance to Mr. Joyce during the hearings.
We also hold that billing four hours to attend oral argument before this court is reasonable, even though the actual argument time was considerably less. Oral arguments scheduled before this court usually begin at 9:30 am and can sometimes last until after noon. Mr. Joyce's allotment of four hours seems to be in the ballpark for attorneys who sit in for the full duration of their argument, usually waiting for their case to be called. We agree with Castañeda that such time is "necessary and unavoidable in litigation." See Brewster v. Dukakis, 3 F.3d 488, 492 n. 4 (1st Cir.1993) (identifying court appearances
Therefore, we find that the government's challenges to the time entries listed above are without merit.
As previously noted, Castaneda filed an amended application for attorneys' fees after he had filed his original petition. The main difference between the two petitions is that, on the amended petition, Castañeda sought a fee enhancement based on the EAJA's "limited availability of qualified attorneys" exception to the $125 statutory cap.
Examining the records, it seems that Ms. Endy devoted 2.5 hours to working on the amended petition, while law clerk Brian Doyle devoted 16 hours to it. We therefore find it reasonable to reduce Mr. Doyle's hours by eight hours, but we decline to reduce the hours billed by Ms. Endy, due to the minimal amount of time she devoted to the amended petition. Accordingly, Mr. Doyle's total hours for 2012 are reduced by eight.
This brings us to the government's final challenge. It notes that Castañeda has requested almost $5,000 in "costs and fees," but that none of the itemized statements are supported with any documentation or are explained in sufficient detail to indicate for what purpose they were incurred. We agree with the government that this is the case, and that the costs, as presented, are invalid. Nevertheless, Castañeda has represented that
We therefore order Castañeda to submit a new itemized statement of attorneys' fees and expenses which conforms to the strictures of this opinion. His new statement of fees shall only include the attorneys' fees that were expended representing him in the proceedings that led to our decision in Castañeda IV, the "intimately related" post-remand administrative proceedings that followed, the proceedings in Castañeda V and the current fee litigation. If
For the reasons set forth above, Castañeda's petition is granted in part and denied in part. Castañeda shall have twenty (20) days following the publication of this opinion to comply with the order contained herein.
