There are roughly 200 federal fee-shifting statutes on top of the common fee-shifting rules (such as for a frivolous suit). Different federal courts have different ways of setting those attorneys’ fees. Some of those methods are set out in the local rules. But the next time you’re reading the local rule and drafting a motion for attorneys’ fees, you might also want to read a recent decision by the Ninth Circuit.

Martin Vogel sued Harbor Plaza Shopping Center for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The plaza failed to appear before trial and the district court entered a default judgment. Vogel asked for attorneys’ fees. But the fees awarded to Vogel were a sliver of the fees that Vogel requested—$600 instead of the $36,000-plus that Vogel requested. The district court ruled that a local rule setting attorneys’ fees based on the amount of the judgment should control unless Vogel justified the larger fee requested. And the district court held that Vogel had not justified the larger fee. Vogel appealed; the Ninth Circuit reversed.

The Ninth Circuit held that the district court had misread the rule as “prescribing a presumptively correct award of fees in cases in which prevailing parties claim fees in excess of the scheduled amount.” The Ninth Circuit held that the rule allowed a party to choose either the fee schedule or a “reasonable” attorneys’ fee. And what counts as a reasonable fee should be set independently of the local rule’s fee schedule, since “[t]he rule contains no presumption that the schedule is ‘reasonable’ in this situation.” “The rule thus specifies that the district court, not the schedule, will fix the fee when a lawyer seeks more than the schedule provides and that the touchstone of the court’s award is reasonableness.”

What’s reasonable in one case might not be reasonable in another. The Ninth Circuit explained that “[a] ‘reasonable’ fee is a fee that is sufficient to induce a capable attorney to undertake the representation of a meritorious . . . case. . . . ‘The way to do so is to compensate counsel at the prevailing rate in the community for similar work; no more, no less.’” And the Ninth Circuit could not “understand how the award of $600 meets the court’s obligation to ‘compensate counsel at the prevailing rate in the community for similar work . . . .” The Ninth Circuit vacated the fee award and remanded “for consideration in a manner consistent with this opinion.”

Read the Ninth Circuit’s opinion here.