Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-801_o758.pdf
Page Number: 7.0

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

5 

Opinion of the Court 

a  provision  of  the  National  Childhood  Vaccine  Injury  Act 
that permitted courts to “award attorney’s fees . . . ‘incur-
red [by a claimant] in any proceeding on’ an unsuccessful 
vaccine-injury ‘petition . . . brought in good faith [with] a rea-
sonable basis for the claim.’ ”  569 U. S., at 371 (quoting 42 
U. S. C.  §300aa–15(e)(1)).    The  Court  held  that  the  provi-
sion’s  clear  language  authorized  attorney’s  fees,  even
though  the  statute  exclusively  applied  to  unsuccessful
litigants.  569 U. S., at 372. 

Cloer establishes two points: First, contrary to the Gov-
ernment’s  suggestion,  Congress  has  indeed  enacted  fee-
shifting statutes that apply to nonprevailing parties.  Sec-
ond,  and  again  contrary  to  the  Government’s  view,  the 
American Rule applies to such statutes.  The Government 
itself  argued  in  Cloer  that  the  presumption  against  fee
shifting applied by default, but maintained that the statute 
“depart[ed]  so  far  from  background  principles  about  who
pays a litigant’s attorney’s fees that it [could not] be justi-
fied without a clearer statement than the Act can supply.’ ”  
Brief for Petitioner in Sebelius v. Cloer, O. T. 2012, No. 12– 
236, p. 32.  The Court acknowledged the Government’s po-
sition but concluded that the “rul[e ] of thumb” against fee
shifting gave way because the “words of [the] statute [were]
unambiguous.”  Cloer, 569 U. S., at 380–381 (citing the Gov-
ernment’s brief ). 

The  dissenting  en  banc  Federal  Circuit  Judges  also 
doubted that the American Rule could apply to a §145 ac-
tion.  They characterized the proceeding as an intermediate 
step in obtaining a patent and the payment of legal fees as
a portion of the application costs.  898 F. 3d, at 1200 (opin-
ion of Prost, J.).  Yet §145 has all the marks of the kind of 
adversarial  litigation  in  which  fee  shifting,  and  the  pre-
sumption against it, is common; the statute authorizes fil-
ing a separate civil action where new evidence can be intro-
duced  for  de novo  review  by  a  district  judge.   Thus,  the 
presumption  against  fee  shifting  not  only  applies,  but  is