[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 19-11264

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PBT REAL ESTATE, LLC, 

a Florida limited liability company, 

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

TOWN OF PALM BEACH, 

a Florida municipal corporation, 

DOROTHY JACKS, 

as Property Appraiser of Palm Beach County, Florida, 

ANNE M. GANNON, 

as Tax Collector of Palm Beach County, Florida,

Defendants-Appellees.

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2 Opinion of the Court 19-11264

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Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

D.C. Docket No. 9:17-cv-81254-DMM

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Before BRANCH, GRANT, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Win or lose, in most civil cases you pay your own attorney’s 

fees. But when a court rejects a frivolous 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim, it 

has the discretion to award the defendant attorney’s fees. Here,

PBT Real Estate sued the Town of Palm Beach under § 1983 and 

Florida law. After rejecting PBT’s third amended complaint, the 

district court awarded attorney’s fees to the Town, concluding that 

it had become obvious that PBT’s § 1983 claims were frivolous. 

PBT argues that this decision was an abuse of the court’s discretion. 

Even if we may have exercised our discretion differently, the 

district court did not abuse its discretion when it awarded 

attorney’s fees here.

I. 

The Town of Palm Beach decided to move its utility lines 

underground and to fund the project through a special assessment.1 

1 This is the second appeal in this case. We therefore will not duplicate the 

detailed background facts and procedural history outlined in the previous 

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19-11264 Opinion of the Court 3

The Town allotted the special assessment based on the reliability, 

safety, and aesthetic benefits each property would receive from this 

improvement. After initially implementing the project—and its 

accompanying special assessment—on an as-requested, 

neighborhood-specific basis, the Town decided to underground

the utilities in all remaining areas. In this final phase, it chose to 

exempt from special assessment the properties that it had 

previously assessed, but did not exempt properties that had 

independently funded and executed their own undergrounding 

projects. Because Palm Beach Towers—where PBT’s property 

was located—had shifted its lines underground at its own expense, 

the Town did not exempt PBT. 

PBT concluded that this special assessment violated the 

Constitution, and sued under § 1983.2 But in each of its three 

amended complaints, PBT failed to establish a prima facie case. For 

its class-of-one equal protection claim, PBT argued that the Town 

had no rational basis to justify assessing a property that had 

privately undergrounded its utilities when it exempted the 

properties in the areas where the Town had undergrounded the 

opinion reviewing the underlying merits. See PBT Real Estate, LLC v. Town 

of Palm Beach, 988 F.3d 1274, 1278–83 (11th Cir. 2021).

2 PBT also brought Florida law claims not relevant here because the fee award 

only stemmed from the § 1983 claims and PBT failed to dispute in its initial

brief whether the Town was a prevailing party. See United States v. Levy, 379 

F.3d 1241, 1242–43 (11th Cir. 2004) (reiterating that arguments not raised in 

initial briefs are forfeited).

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utilities through a special assessment. The district court rejected

this claim each time it was filed because PBT failed to establish that 

the compared properties were “similarly situated in light of all the 

factors that would be relevant to an objectively reasonable 

governmental decisionmaker.”3 In itslast two complaints PBT also 

claimed that the assessment violated PBT’s right to substantive due 

process because the project produced no benefit to PBT. The court 

rejected this claim both times, explaining that because PBT never

challenged the assessment as a whole (rather than as applied to 

PBT), it failed to fit its claim into the narrow substantive-dueprocess protection against irrational legislative action. See Kentner 

v. City of Sanibel, 750 F.3d 1274, 1281 (11th Cir. 2014). On appeal,

we affirmed on both counts. See PBT Real Estate, LLC v. Town 

of Palm Beach, 988 F.3d 1274, 1285–86 (11th Cir. 2021).

Before that appeal was decided, the Town motioned for 

attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. The district court granted

the motion. The court reasoned that fees were justified because 

PBT never established a prima facie case for either claim and 

repeatedly refiled the same claims without resolving the flaws the 

court had identified on prior dismissals. PBT challenges that 

award.

3 The court dismissed the first and second amended complaints. On the third 

amended complaint, the court granted the Town’s motion for summary 

judgment on PBT’s § 1983 claims because the Town filed that motion before 

it filed its motion to dismiss. 

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II. 

To obtain attorney’s fees under § 1988, a defendant must 

show that it was the prevailing party and that the plaintiff’s claim 

was frivolous. Sullivan v. Sch. Bd. of Pinellas Cnty., 773 F.2d 1182, 

1188 (11th Cir. 1985). Prevailing party status is not challenged here. 

We review for abuse of discretion a district court’s decision that 

claims are “so frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless” that they 

justify an award of attorney’s fees under § 1988. Beach Blitz Co. v. 

City of Miami Beach, 13 F.4th 1289, 1297 (11th Cir. 2021). “A 

district court abuses its discretion when it (1) fails to afford 

consideration to relevant factors that were due significant weight, 

(2) gives significant weight to an improper or irrelevant factor, or 

(3) commits a clear error of judgment in considering the proper 

factors.” United States v. Irey, 612 F.3d 1160, 1189 (11th Cir. 2010)

(en banc).

We have outlined several “important” factors that shed light 

on whether a claim is frivolous: “(1) whether the plaintiff 

established a prima facie case; (2) whether the defendant offered to 

settle; and (3) whether the trial court dismissed the case prior to 

trial or held a full-blown trial on the merits.” See Sullivan, 773 F.2d 

at 1189. A fourth factor, which we recently clarified is “particularly 

important,” is “whether there was enough support for the claim to 

warrant close attention by the court.” See Beach Blitz, 13 F.4th at 

1302; Busby v. City of Orlando, 931 F.2d 764, 787 (11th Cir. 1991). 

These factors enable district courts to exercise discretion because 

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they are “general guidelines only, not hard and fast rules.” See 

Sullivan, 773 F.2d at 1189. 

The district court did not abuse its discretion here. The first 

and third factors unequivocally label the § 1983 claims frivolous, 

and both parties concede that the second factor stays neutral. It is 

a close call, however, because the fourth factor cuts in the other 

direction. 

The district court emphasized that PBT should not have 

filed complaint after complaint without curing the obvious defects 

in its arguments. PBT began without a prima facie case and never 

took the steps the court indicated were necessary to establish one. 

In each iteration, PBT never explained how its alleged comparators 

could be sufficiently similar when they had already been subjected 

to a special assessment. So its equal protection claim always failed. 

Nor did PBT ever explain how the special assessment was irrational 

as a whole rather than as applied to PBT. These repeated omissions 

led the district court to dismiss the case before trial.

That brings us to the fourth factor: whether there was 

enough support for PBT’s claims to merit close attention from the 

court. On the one hand, PBT provided no cases to support its 

constitutional arguments. See PBT Real Estate, 988 F.3d at 1285–

86; cf. Beach Blitz, 13 F.4th at 1304–05 (holding a claim warranted 

close review when two prior cases supported it). And because PBT 

failed to rectify the flaws identified in earlier complaints, the final 

complaint—the basis of the attorney’s fees award—required 

minimal review by the district court. See Christiansburg Garment 

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Co. v. EEOC, 434 U.S. 412, 422 (1978) (noting fees may be awarded 

even if claims are not frivolous at first if the “plaintiff continued to 

litigate after it clearly became so”). Moreover, this Court 

unanimously rejected both claims on appeal, relying on the same 

flaws the district court had identified. See PBT Real Estate, 988 

F.3d at 1285–86.

On the other hand, however, it was not obvious from the 

beginning that PBT’s claims were entirely frivolous. Even after the 

second amended complaint, the district court dismissed PBT’s 

claims without prejudice, allowing PBT to amend and refile its 

complaint. This at least indicated that the § 1983 challenges to the

special assessment were not impossible. If PBT had capitalized on 

the feedback provided in prior dismissals, it would have stood a 

better chance. Further, this case warranted enough attention that 

on the prior appeal we requested oral argument and published our 

decision. See PBT Real Estate, 988 F.3d at 1274. These two facts 

indicate that PBT’s claims warranted at least some review.

But the standard of review here—abuse of discretion—is 

designed to ensure that the district court’s judgment prevails in 

close cases. As a result, we sometimes “affirm the district court 

even though we would have gone the other way had it been our 

call.” United States v. Frazier, 387 F.3d 1244, 1259 (11th Cir. 2004)

(en banc). PBT’s § 1983 claims lacked support, and PBT was given 

multiple opportunities to remedy the problem. The district court 

thus did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that by the third 

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amended complaint PBT’s § 1983 claims were so frivolous that 

they merited attorney’s fees.

* * *

The district court did not abuse its discretion, so we AFFIRM

the award of attorney’s fees.

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