Opinion ID: 109509
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Attorneys' Fees

Text: The District Court, without explanation or citation of authority, awarded attorneys' fees of $1,000 against each of the two schools. The Court of Appeals reversed this part of the District Court's judgment. Anticipating our decision in Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U. S. 240, the appellate court refused to adopt the so-called private attorney general theory under which attorneys' fees could be awarded to any litigant who vindicates an important public interest. And it could find no other ground for the award: no statute explicitly provides for attorneys' fees in § 1981 cases, [18] and neither school had evinced  `obstinate obduracy'  or bad faith in contesting the action. 515 F. 2d, at 1089-1090. Mindful of this Court's Alyeska decision, the petitioners do not claim that their vindication of the right of Negro children to attend private schools alone entitles them to attorneys' fees. They make instead two other arguments. First, the petitioners claim that the schools exhibited bad faith, not by litigating the legal merits of their racially discriminatory admissions policy, but by denying that they in fact had discriminated. To support this claim, the petitioners cite a number of conflicts in testimony between the McCrarys, the Gonzaleses, and other witnesses, on the one hand, and the officials of the schools, on the other, which the District Court resolved against the schools in finding racial discrimination. Indeed, the trial court characterized as unbelievable the testimony of three officials of the Fairfax-Brewster School. 363 F. Supp., at 1202. By stubbornly contesting the facts, the petitioners assert, the schools attempted to deceive the court and, in any event, needlessly prolonged the litigation. We cannot accept this argument. To be sure, the Court has recognized the inherent power of the federal courts to assess attorneys' fees when the losing party has acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons . . . . F. D. Rich Co. v. United States ex rel. Industrial Lumber Co., 417 U. S. 116, 129. See Alyeska, supra, at 258-259; Vaughan v. Atkinson, 369 U. S. 527. But in this case the factual predicate to a finding of bad faith is absent. Simply, because the facts were found against the schools does not by itself prove that threshold of irresponsible conduct for which a penalty assessment would be justified. Whenever the facts in a case are disputed, a court perforce must decide that one party's version is inaccurate. Yet it would be untenable to conclude ipso facto that that party had acted in bad faith. As the Court of Appeals stated, 515 F. 2d, at 1090: Faults in perception or memory often account for differing trial testimony, but that has not yet been thought a sufficient ground to shift the expense of litigation. We find no warrant for disturbing the holding of the Court of Appeals that no bad faith permeated the defense by the schools of this lawsuit. The petitioners' second argument is that while 42 U. S. C. § 1981 contains no authorization for the award of attorneys' fees, 42 U. S. C. § 1988 implicitly does. In relevant part, that section reads: The jurisdiction in civil . . . matters conferred on the district courts by the provisions of this chapter and Title 18, for the protection of all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and for their vindication, shall be exercised and enforced in conformity with the laws of the United States, so far as such laws are suitable to carry the same into effect; but in all cases where they are not adapted to the object, or are deficient in the provisions necessary to furnish suitable remedies and punish offenses against law, the common law, as modified and changed by the constitution and statutes of the State wherein the court having jurisdiction of such civil or criminal cause is held, so far as the same is not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States, shall be extended to and govern the said courts in the trial and disposition of the cause . . . . The petitioners assert, in the words of their brief, that § 1988 embodies a uniquely broad commission to the federal courts to search among federal and state statutes and common law for the remedial devices and procedures which best enforce the substantive provisions of Sec. 1981 and other civil rights statutes. As part of that broad commission the federal courts are obligated, the petitioners say, to award attorneys' fees whenever such fees are needed to encourage private parties to seek relief against illegal discrimination. This contention is without merit. It is true that in order to vindicate the rights conferred by the various Civil Rights Acts, § 1988 authorize[s] federal courts, where federal law is unsuited or insufficient `to furnish suitable remedies,' to look to principles of the common law, as altered by state law . . . . Moor v. County of Alameda, 411 U. S. 693, 702-703. See Sullivan v. Little Hunting Park, Inc., 396 U. S., at 239-240. But the Court has never interpreted § 1988 to warrant the award of attorneys' fees. And nothing in the legislative history of that statute suggests that such a radical departure from the long-established American rule forbidding the award of attorneys' fees was intended. More fundamentally, the petitioners' theory would require us to overlook the penultimate clause of § 1988: so far as the same is not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States. As the Court recounted in some detail in Alyeska, supra, at 247, passim, the law of the United States, but for a few well-recognized exceptions not present in these cases, [19] has always been that absent explicit congressional authorization, attorneys' fees are not a recoverable cost of litigation. Hence, in order to furnish an award of attorneys' fees, we would have to find that at least as to cases brought under statutes to which § 1988 applies, Congress intended to set aside this longstanding American rule of law. We are unable to conclude, however, from the generalized commands of § 1988, that Congress intended any such result. For the reasons stated in this opinion, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is in all respects affirmed. It is so ordered.