LaChance v. Commissioner of Correction

This appeal concerns an award of attorney’s fees under the Federal Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Award Act of 1976, 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b), in a civil rights action brought by a Massachusetts prison inmate, Edmund LaChance. LaChance claimed that the defendants violated his constitutional due process rights by holding him in essentially solitary confinement in a special management unit (SMU) for ten months, without a hearing, while waiting to transfer or reclassify him. That litigation eventually resulted in our decision in LaChance v. Commissioner of Correction, 463 Mass. 767 (2012) (LaChance I),…