Opinion ID: 218858
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The merits requirement

Text: Any judgment must also be on the merits. As recognized by the Supreme Court shortly after § 1988 was amended to allow attorney's fees, Congress intended to permit the interim award of counsel fees only when a party has prevailed on the merits of at least some of his claims. Hanrahan v. Hampton, 446 U.S. 754, 758, 100 S.Ct. 1987, 64 L.Ed.2d 670 (1980) ( per curiam ) (emphases added); see also id. at 757, 100 S.Ct. 1987 ([I]t seems clearly to have been the intent of Congress to permit such an interlocutory award only to a party who has established his entitlement to some relief on the merits of his claims, either in the trial court or on appeal.). Similarly, the Supreme Court has observed that [r]espect for ordinary language requires that a plaintiff receive at least some relief on the merits of his claim before he can be said to prevail. Hewitt, 482 U.S. at 760, 107 S.Ct. 2672. Indeed, in an area of the law that has been framed in various ways, Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433, 103 S.Ct. 1933, the merits-based requirement established in Hanrahan and Hewitt has been consistently repeated throughout the Court's prevailing party jurisprudence. See Sole v. Wyner, 551 U.S. 74, 82, 127 S.Ct. 2188, 167 L.Ed.2d 1069 (2007); Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 603-04, 608, 121 S.Ct. 1835; Farrar, 506 U.S. at 110-12, 113 S.Ct. 566; Garland, 489 U.S. at 790, 792, 109 S.Ct. 1486. We have followed suit to hold that, to be entitled to prevailing party fees based on interim relief, relief must be derived from some determination on the merits. J.O. v. Orange Twp. Bd. of Educ., 287 F.3d 267, 274 (3d Cir.2002).