Rhodes, James a., et al. v. Stewart, Larry (488 U.S. 1)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided October 17, 1988 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 488 U.S. 1 · 109 S. Ct. 202
- Decided
- October 17, 1988
- Term
- October Term 1988
- Vote
- 6–3
- Issue area
- Attorneys
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. After entry of a judgment for the plaintiffs in a suit by two prisoners under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, ordered the defendants to pay the plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees pursuant to 42 U. S. C. § 1988. There is no entitlement to attorney’s fees, however, unless the requesting party prevails; and by the time the District Court entered its judgment in the underlying suit one of the plaintiffs had died and the other was no longer in custody. In this posture, the plaintiffs were not prevailing parties under the rule we set forth in Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U. S. 755 (1987), and the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit erred in affirming the award of fees by the District Court. I On January 17, 1978, while in the custody of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Albert Reese and Larry Stewart filed a complaint alleging violations of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by officials who refused them permission to subscribe to a magazine. On April 2, 1981, the District Court issued an opinion and an order, later amended in respects no longer pertinent to the case. The court ruled that correctional officials had not applied the proper procedural and substantive standards in denying the inmates their request, and ordered compliance with those standards. Two months later, the District Court…
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