Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-801_o758.pdf
Page Number: 9.0

Cite as:  589 U. S. ____ (2019) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

broadly to include “the employment and consumption, as of 
time or labor,” or the “disbursing of money”).  Though these
definitions are capacious enough to include attorney’s fees,
the  mere  failure  to  foreclose  a  fee  award  “neither  specifi-
cally nor explicitly authorizes courts to shift [fees].”  Baker 
Botts, 576 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6).

Reading  the  term  “expenses”  alongside  neighboring
words  in  the  statute,  however,  supports  a  conclusion  ex-
cluding  legal  fees  from  the  scope  of  §145.  The  complete
phrase “expenses of the proceeding” is similar to the Latin 
expensæ litis, or “expenses of the litigation.”  This term has 
long referred to a class of expenses commonly recovered in
litigation to which attorney’s fees did not traditionally be-
long.  See Black’s Law Dictionary 461 (1891) (defining “ex-
pensæ litis” to mean “generally allowed” costs); 1 J. Bouvier, 
Law Dictionary 392 (1839) (defining the term to mean the
“costs which are generally allowed to the successful party”); 
id., at 244 (excluding from the definition of “costs” the “ex-
traordinary fees [a party] may have paid counsel”).  These 
definitions suggest that the use of “expenses” in §145 would 
not  have  been  commonly  understood  to  include  attorney’s
fees at its enactment. 

Finally, the modifier “all” does not expand §145’s reach to
include  attorney’s  fees.  Although  the  word  conveys
breadth, it cannot transform “expenses” to reach an outlay
it  would  not  otherwise  include.  Cf.  Rimini  Street,  Inc.  v. 
Oracle USA, Inc., 586 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (slip op., at 
6–7)  (“The  adjective  ‘full’  in  §505  therefore  does  not  alter 
the meaning of the word ‘costs.’  Rather, ‘full costs’ are all 
the ‘costs’ otherwise available under law”). 

Section 145’s plain text thus does not overcome the Amer-
ican Rule’s presumption against fee shifting to permit the
PTO to recoup its legal personnel salaries as “expenses of 
the proceedings.”