Ross Webster, Jr. v. Dewey Sowders, Versar, Inc., Intervenor

MERRITT, Circuit Judge.

The principal questions at issue on this appeal concern the limits on a district court’s authority (1) to award interim attorney fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 without findings and conclusions respecting liability, (2) to impose the cost of a court-appointed monitor upon a defendant under Fed.R. Evid. 706(b); and (3) to impose Rule 11 sanctions on a litigant for undertaking an appeal considered frivolous by the District Court.

I

In late 1985 officials at the Northpoint Training Center, a Kentucky correctional institution, began a program to use inmate labor to remove from…