Opinion ID: 3052889
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Pre-litigation Conduct

Text: [6] The government also argues that the district court relied excessively on the government’s pre-litigation conduct in finding bad faith. The district court did discuss the conduct underlying the litigation—the unreasonably perfunctory search, a failure to follow INS policy requiring consent to enter the home, and the officer’s conduct during the entry and search of the home—in finding bad faith. But the district court correctly recognized that an award of attorney’s fees is not appropriate when it is “based solely upon a finding of bad faith in the conduct underlying the lawsuit.” Ass’n of Flight Attendants v. Horizon Air Indus., 976 F.2d 541, 550 (9th Cir. 1992) (emphasis added). In Association of Flight Attendants, this court noted that no circuit court has shifted attorney fees based “solely upon a finding of bad faith as an element of the cause of action presented in the underlying suit,” but recognized a possibility that “prelitigation conduct might be relevant to an award of fees for bad faith conduct during the litigation.” Id. at 549-50. We have previously approved of district courts considering the “totality of the circumstances,” including conduct “prelitigation and during trial,” when making bad faith determinations. See Cazares, 959 F.2d at 755 (quoting Rawlings v. Heckler, 725 F.2d 1192, 1196 (9th Cir. 1983) (emphasis added)). In this case, the pre-litigation conduct was only one of several grounds on which the district court granted attorney’s fees. As a result, we conclude that the district court did not excessively rely on the government’s pre-litigation conduct. The government also contends that the district court did not pay sufficient attention to other aspects of the government’s litigation conduct, including the fact that it narrowed the claims for trial and limited the damages, which, according to RODRIGUEZ v. UNITED STATES 12303 the government, demonstrates that it litigated zealously but not in bad faith. This approach would, in effect, absolve the government of responsibility for bad faith litigation conduct because, at various points during the many years this case was litigated, it achieved some success. We hold that it is unnecessary to find that every aspect of a case is litigated by a party in bad faith in order to find bad faith by that party.