Murphy v. Smith
U.S. Supreme Court · decided February 21, 2018 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Decided
- February 21, 2018
- Term
- October Term 2017
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Gorsuch
- Issue area
- Attorneys
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice GORSUCH delivered the opinion of the Court. This is a case about how much prevailing prisoners must pay their lawyers. When a prisoner wins a civil rights suit and the district court awards fees to the prisoner's attorney, a federal statute says that "a portion of the [prisoner's] judgment (not to exceed 25 percent) shall be applied to satisfy the amount of attorney's fees awarded against the defendant. If the award of attorney's fees is not greater than 150 percent of the judgment, the excess shall be paid by the defendant." 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(2). Whatever else you might make of this, the first sentence pretty clearly tells us that the prisoner has to pay some part of the attorney's fee award before financial responsibility shifts to the defendant. But how much is enough? Does the first sentence allow the district court discretion to take any amount it wishes from the plaintiff's judgment to pay the attorney, from 25% down to a penny? Or does the first sentence instead mean that the court must pay the attorney's entire fee award from the plaintiff's judgment until it reaches the 25% cap and only then turn to the defendant? The facts of our case illustrate the problem we face. After a jury trial, the district court entered judgment for Charles Murphy in the amount of $307,733.82 against two of his prison guards, Officer Robert Smith and Lieutenant Gregory Fulk. The…
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