The seven Newberg residents who sued the Newberg-Dundee School District and four current and former members of its board are asking a judge to reconsider her decision to not award the bulk of attorney fees and other costs accrued in arguing the case.
Attorneys Melissa Hopkins and Judy Snyder filed a Plaintiffs Motion for Reconsideration and Order in Yamhill County Circuit Court in early September, arguing that Judge Cynthia Easterday erred in her Aug. 26 opinion that the attorneys were not entitled to recover fees and charges because they were unsuccessful in three of four aspects of the lawsuit.
Easterday’s ruling precluded Hopkins and Snyder from receiving the more than $370,000 in costs and fees they incurred in arguing the case earlier this year. Easterday ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in an earlier decision, finding that board members must reimburse the district the roughly $28,000 it paid to attorney Tyler Smith for his services in 2021-22. Smith was hired by the conservative members of the former board as supplemental legal counsel.
Should Easterday’s ruling stand, the plaintiffs in the case will be responsible for paying the attorneys’ fees and costs, although at what rate is unclear.
State law gives judges great latitude in awarding attorney fees — Easterday deployed that latitude in denying the attorneys the bill they submitted to the court in May.
“Based on the totality of the circumstances, the court exercises its discretion to deny an award of attorney fees against the school district,” Easterday wrote, adding that a component of an earlier ruling played heavily in her decision. “The court finds that the above factors do not apply to support an award of attorney fees against the Newberg school district.”
Key to Easterday’s decision is her dismissal in May of three of the four complaints against the school district and the four current and former members of the school board at the center of the lawsuit.
While Easterday ruled that the board members — Trevor DeHart, Dave Brown, Brian Shannon and Renee Powell — had violated public meeting laws by hiring Smith in the summer of 2021, she exonerated the school district itself, saying its officials “tried to mitigate the actions of the individual defendants.”
Therefore, Easterday ruled, the school district should not be responsible for paying the attorney fees beyond what state statute requires under its “prevailing party fee” of $105. Snyder said in submitting the large bill that it represented the work of three attorneys and a paralegal over the course of a year in preparing the case for court.
Motion based on judge's earlier decision
The motion for reconsideration is based on three issues Hopkins and Snyder argue were not included in Easterday’s Aug. 26 opinion: that the plaintiffs’ have always sought their attorney fees and costs from the individual defendants; they question the ruling as to whether the individual defendants are liable for plaintiffs’ attorney fees, costs and expenses — and the amount of the award; and seek a clarification that plaintiffs actually brought only one claim of a violation of the Oregon public meetings law and asserted four different ways in which the law was violated.
“The basis for reconsideration is the court’s mistaken or inadvertent omission to include in the opinion a ruling on an award of attorney fees, costs and expenses to the plaintiffs be paid by defendants DeHart, Powell, Shannon and Brown,” Hopkins wrote in the motion.
Hopkins further argued that she and Snyder had been consistent in seeking a judgement against the school district and the four board members in the matter, not just the school district.
“The individual defendants understood that plaintiffs were seeking and that they were exposed to a judgment for plaintiffs’ attorney fees, costs and expenses and opposed plaintiffs’ petition,” Hopkins wrote. “Plaintiffs demonstrated in their briefing that state statute gives this court discretion to award attorney fees to successful plaintiffs from the individual defendants, as this court already determined the individual defendants misconduct was willful.”
January ruling against defendants stands
The motion further insists that Easterday reconsider her decision in light of her ruling in January that the four defendants had deliberately violated state public meeting laws by amassing a quorum outside public view to consider hiring Smith.
“The opinion regarding plaintiffs’ attorney fees and costs mistakenly asserted that ‘Plaintiffs now seek, from defendant Newberg school district only, $358,585 in attorneys’ fees, $1,435 in costs and $9,458 in litigation expenses,’” the motion reads. “From the very beginning, plaintiffs have sought to hold all of the defendants liable for attorney fees and costs, including the individual defendants.”
Hopkins argues in the motion that Easterday’s August ruling concentrated on the plea for the district to pay the legal fees, saying it should not as it had attempted to “mitigate the actions of the individual defendants.” The ruling omitted, Hopkins contended, “any discussion or ruling regarding an award of plaintiffs’ attorney fees to be paid by the individual defendants.”
The attorneys also insist that Easterday’s opinion was mistaken when it asserted that the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs only against the individual defendants on one out of the four claims brought before the court.
“Plaintiffs’ suit brought one claim under state statute alleging that all defendants – including the named individual defendants – violated the law in four different ways, similar to that of a personal injury claim,” the motion said.
Hopkins’ clients — Beth and Greg Woolsey, Jeff and Kathleen McNeal, Elizabeth Gemeroy and Meghan and Stefan Czarnecki — declined comment until Easterday rules on the motion.
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