Opinion ID: 421798
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: 11 The background against which the Equal Access to Justice Act must be viewed is the so-called American Rule pertaining to the allocation of costs of counsel. Under that longstanding doctrine, each litigant ordinarily must pay his own lawyer. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 247, 95 S.Ct. 1612, 1616, 44 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975). 12 The rule has only two narrow exceptions: when a loser has acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons, he may be obliged to reimburse the winner for his attorneys' fees, F.D. Rich Co. v. United States, 417 U.S. 116, 129, 94 S.Ct. 2157, 2165, 40 L.Ed.2d 703 (1974) (dicta); accord Lipsig v. National Student Marketing Corp., 663 F.2d 178, 180 (D.C.Cir.1980) (per curiam); and, when an individual litigant, by successfully maintaining a suit, has conferred a benefit on a group of persons, the court may allow him to recover his attorneys' fees from the beneficiaries, Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., 396 U.S. 375, 392-97, 90 S.Ct. 616, 625-28, 24 L.Ed.2d 593 (1970). 13 Traditionally, the United States was even less vulnerable to an award of attorneys' fees than a private litigant; in the absence of an express statutory provision, even the aforementioned bad faith and common benefit rules could not be invoked against the federal government. Pealo v. Farmers Home Administration of the United States Department of Agriculture, 562 F.2d 744, 748 (D.C.Cir.1977) (alternative holding); Rhode Island Committee on Energy v. General Services Administration, 561 F.2d 397, 405 (1st Cir.1977). The protection from liability for attorneys' fees enjoyed by the United States under these circumstances derived from two sources: the general doctrine of sovereign immunity; and 28 U.S.C. § 2412, which, prior to its amendment by the EAJA, was consistently construed as immunizing the United States against attorney's fees awards absent clear or express statutory authority to the contrary. NAACP v. Civiletti, 609 F.2d 514, 516 (D.C.Cir.1979), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 922, 100 S.Ct. 3012, 65 L.Ed.2d 1114 (1980). 12 Since at least the 1920s, the restrictive American doctrine pertaining to the allocation of attorneys' fees has been subjected to persistent attack. 14 In the 1960s and early 1970s, federal courts sensitive to these criticisms began to experiment with various alternative, more liberal, fee-shifting rules. The most important of these developments was the so-called private attorney general theory, under which prevailing parties were allowed to recover attorneys' fees when their suits resulted in enforcement of important societal rights. 15 In 1975, in the Alyeska case, the Supreme Court called a halt to this judicially managed doctrinal innovation. The Court concluded that, in view of the importance and complexity of the field and of the history of legislative involvement, it is apparent that the circumstances under which attorneys' fees are to be awarded and the range of discretion of the courts in making those awards are matters for Congress to determine. 421 U.S. at 262, 95 S.Ct. at 1624 (footnote omitted). Consequently, it held that, in the absence of specific statutory authorization, federal courts sitting in non-diversity cases could award attorneys' fees to prevailing parties only under the established common law exceptions to the American Rule. Id. at 247, 257-60, 271, 95 S.Ct. at 1616, 1621-23, 1628. 13 The Supreme Court's message was not lost on the legislature. A year after the Alyeska decision, Congress passed the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act, which allows prevailing parties in suits brought under specified civil rights statutes to recover a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs. 16 The Equal Access to Justice Act, passed four years later, 17 constitutes an even more comprehensive response to the Supreme Court's invitation and self-abnegation. The Act applies to all civil actions brought by or against the United States 18 and allows private prevailing parties to recover attorneys' fees from the government in a wide variety of circumstances. 14 Two provisions of the statute are crucial in the present case. Section 2412(b) authorizes courts to award private prevailing parties reasonable fees and expenses of attorneys, except when such awards are expressly prohibited by statute, and declares that [t]he United States shall be liable for such fees and expenses to the same extent that any other party would be liable under the common law or under the terms of any statute which specifically provides for such an award. 19 The most important effect of this provision is to codify and make applicable to the government the bad faith and common benefit exceptions to the American Rule. 20 15 Section 2412(d)(1)(A) is more sweeping. It provides that a court shall award an eligible 21 private prevailing party attorneys' fees and other litigation expenses unless some other statute specifically provides otherwise or the court finds that the position of the United States was substantially justified or that special circumstances make an award unjust. 22 Ordinary tort suits are excluded from the coverage of the provision, but the legislative history makes clear that constitutional tort actions come within its purview. 23 Section 2412(d) is avowedly experimental. Unlike section 2412(b), it contains a sunset provision; unless reenacted before October 1, 1984, it will be automatically repealed. 24 16 Because of the large bodies of case law defining the contours of the two traditional exceptions to the American Rule, interpretation and application of section 2412(b) usually is relatively straightforward. 25 Section 2412(d)(1)(A), unfortunately, is much more difficult to apply. It is not grounded in any body of common law doctrine. Because of its recent vintage, it has not yet acquired a discernible gloss of judicial interpretation. And, most importantly, several of its crucial terms are distressingly ambiguous. For reasons that will become apparent, two of those terms--the position of the United States  and substantially justified --loom large in the case before us. Before proceeding, therefore, we must bring those phrases into sharper focus. And, of course, we must strive to lend them shapes that will make them meaningful vehicles, not only for disposing of the case at hand, but for resolving other controversies that come within the broad coverage of the provision. 17