PER CURIAM.
This action was commenced by several inmates at the Columbus Correctional Facility (“CCF”) on behalf of all persons incarcerated at the prison. The inmates charged CCF prison officials with: (1) the unlawful segregation of prisoners by race, and (2) the use of certain types of physical restraints on the inmates. The complainants sought declaratory and injunctive relief against the CCF prison officials for the alleged unconstitutional conditions of confinement.
On July 13, 1979, the district court issued a preliminary injunction against the further use of physical restraints and the segregation of prisoners by race. CCF then perfected an interlocutory appeal of the injunction to this court.
In December 1979, before this court entered judgment on the appeal of the preliminary injunction, the parties signed a Consent Decree which incorporated the provisions of the July 13, 1979 order. After entry of the Consent Decree, the attorneys representing the plaintiffs moved for an award of attorney’s fees. The district court granted fees in the amount of $117,020.34 for approximately 1850 hours of work. The defendants then appealed the award of the fees to this court.
Both appeals, the appeal of the preliminary injunction and the appeal of the award of attorney’s fees, were consolidated for the purpose of oral argument. This court dismissed as moot the appeal of the preliminary injunction in our order issued from the bench on June 17, 1980.
We now hold that the district court’s award of attorney’s fees did not constitute an abuse of discretion. The defendants appealed the award alleging that the district court: (1) based its order for the payment of attorney’s fees on the expenditure of an unreasonable number of hours; (2) failed to make deductions where a substantial amount of duplication existed; (3) failed to reduce the award of attorney’s fees to reflect the fact that plaintiffs had caused or aggravated many of the conditions underlying their complaint; (4) improperly awarded plaintiffs’ counsel fees for the work of paralegals; (5) failed to order attorney’s fees based on a reasonable rate of compensation; and (6) failed to deduct a percentage of the requested attorney’s fees for failure to keep accurate and contemporaneous records.
This court has thoroughly outlined the criteria for determining the appropriateness of an award of attorney’s fees. Northcross v. Board of Education of Memphis City Schools, 611 F.2d 624 (6th Cir. 1979), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 911, 100 S.Ct. 2999, 64 L.Ed.2d 862 (1980). The district court discussed and correctly applied the standards established in Northcross. The defendants have not raised any issues which were not raised below. The district court held an extensive hearing in which it addressed all of the issues. We find no error in its findings of fact or conclusions of law.
Accordingly, the judgment of the district court, Judge Robert M. Duncan, is AFFIRMED.
What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
Your task is to identify the state of the first listed state or local government agency that is an appellant.