The DeKalb County school district must pay at least $450,000 in legal fees and expenses to lawyers for a Marietta architect over protracted litigation against the system's minority contract program, a federal judge has recommended.

The architect, Paramijit Virdi, who filed suit against the school district in 1997, should be awarded $100 in nominal damages, U.S. Magistrate Alan Baverman said in a recent 143-page order.

If Baverman's recommendation is approved by U.S. District Court Judge Charles Pannell, it will be a costly defeat for the school system. Virdi's lawyers had asked for $563,056 in legal fees, while the school system said the award of fees should be just $12,000.

Baverman recommended the school district pay $431,436 in attorneys fees and $19,664 in expenses to the Atlanta law firm Parks, Chesin & Walbert, which represented Virdi.

Dale A. Davis, a spokesman for the DeKalb school system, noted that Baverman's order was not a final judgment. "Based on Mr. Virdi's lack of success in this case, he should be ashamed seeking this amount of funds from the taxpayers," Davis added.

According to court documents, Virdi was an Asian-American architect of Indian descent who accused the school system of racial discrimination. The suit claimed a contractor for the school system told Virdi he was denied a contract because the system favored African-American-owned businesses.

Virdi's lawsuit resulted in thousands of pages of court motions and rulings, a trial and three appeals to and three separate rulings by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. When all was said and done, Virdi did not prove he was the victim of intentional race discrimination.

But his suit did prompt a ruling that found unconstitutional the district's Minority Vendor Involvement Program. The program was created to help minority professionals, such as architects, engineers and lawyers, get contracts.