Sierra Club v. United States Environmental Protection Agency

MEMORANDUM *

The Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) appeals the calculation of attorney fees awarded to the Sierra Club pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 7604 (d) on account of its successful attempt to ensure the EPA complied with the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7411 (b)(1)(B). The EPA argues that the district court abused its discretion by employing San Francisco’s hourly rate when calculating reasonable attorney fees pursuant to the Ninth Circuit’s “forum rule.” Gates v. Deukmejian, 987 F.2d 1392, 1405 (9th Cir.1993). According to the EPA, the district court should have instead applied an exception to the forum rule because the bulk of one attorney’s work was performed outside the forum, in a legal market the EPA claims was “far less expensive.”

Under fee shifting statutes such as the Clean Air Act, attorneys representing the prevailing party are to be compensated according to a “reasonable hourly rate” as typically “calculated according to the prevailing market rates in the relevant legal community,” Blum v. Stenson, 465 U.S. 886, 888, 895 , 104 S.Ct. 1541 , 79 L.Ed.2d 891 (1984), although the rate may be modified according to other relevant factors not reflected by that “lodestar…