Ethics

The Supreme Court issued two lawyering opinions this morning, Holland v. Florida and Astrue v. Ratliff.

In Holland v. Florida, the Court held that the statute of limitations for filing a federal habeas petition under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 is subject to equitable tolling in appropriate cases, and remanded the matter back to the Eleventh Circuit to determine whether tolling is warranted in Mr. Holland's case.

Justice Breyer authored the 7-2 opinion (Alito concurred in part and in the judgment, Scalia was joined by Thomas in dissent).  The majority rejected the Eleventh Circuit's "rigid" standard for finding the "extraordinary circumstances" warranting equitable tolling.  (The Eleventh Circuit held that "even attorney conduct that is grossly negligent can never warrant tolling absent bad faith, dishonesty, divided loyalty, mental impairment or so forth on the lawyer's part.")  Instead, Breyer suggested that the facts of this case "may well be an extraordinary instance" that would justify equitable tolling:

[Attorney] Collins failed to file Holland's federal petition on time despite Holland's many letters that repeatedly emphasized the importance of his doing so.  Collins apparently did not do the research necessary to find out the proper filing date, despite Holland's letters that went so far as to identify the applicable legal rules.  Collins failed to inform Holland in a timely manner about the crucial fact that the Florida Supreme Court had decided his case, again despite Holland's many pleas for that information.  And Collins failed to communicate with his client over a period of years, despite various pleas from Holland that Collins respond to his letters.

In reaching this conclusion, Breyer also referenced an amicus brief submitted by a group of legal ethics professors (including LEF bloggers Monroe Freedman, Roy Simon, Brad Wendel and myself):

A group of teachers of legal ethics tells us that these various failures violated fundamental canons of professional responsibility, which require attorneys to perform reasonably competent legal work, to communicate with their clients, to implement clients' reasonable requests, to keep their clients informed of key developments in their cases, and never to abandon a client.

In Astrue v. Ratliff, the Court held that fees awarded under the Equal Access to Justice Act belong to the client, not the attorney, and as such the fees are subject to a government offset to satisfy the client's pre-existing federal debt.  (Here, Attorney Ratliff prevailed on a claim for social security benefits wrongfully denied to her client, and was awarded fees of $2,112.60, all of which will now go to offset her client's federal debt.)  

Justice Thomas delivered the unanimous opinion, but Justice Sotomayor authored a concurring opinion joined by Justices Stevens and Ginsburg.  Justice Sotomayor wrote:

I join the Court's opinion because I agree that the text of the [EAJA] and our precedents compel the conclusion that an attorney's fee award under [this statute] is payable to the prevailing litigant rather than the attorney. ... That conclusion, however, does not answer the question whether Congress intended the Government to deduct moneys from EAJA awards to offset a litigant's pre-existing and unrelated debt...  In my view, it is likely both that Congress did not consider that question and, that had it done so, it would not have wanted EAJA fee awards to be subject to offset.

The EAJA's admirable purpose will be undercut if lawyers fear that they will never actually receive attorney's fees to which a court has determined the prevailing party is entitled. ... Subjecting EAJA fee awards to administrative offset for a litigant's debt will unquestionably make it more difficult for persons of limited means to find attorneys to represent them.