Opinion ID: 786554
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Decision to Grant Attorney Fees

Text: 41 The district court in this case correctly observed that because the Fogerty factors are nonexclusive, not every factor must weigh in favor of the prevailing party and other factors may be considered as well. Concluding that attorney fees and costs should be granted to Diamond Time in the interest of justice and in furtherance of the objectives of the Copyright Act, the district court explained that: 42 the following factors ... weigh in favor of an award: (1) the plaintiffs' litigation strategy that resulted in suing defendants against which they had little hope of recovering; (2) the plaintiffs' motivation for failing to dismiss stale claims; (3) the interest in deterring further litigation of stale claims; and (4) the inherent weakness in the plaintiffs' copyright claims against this defendant. These factors dictate that the plaintiffs should be made to answer for litigating this action, and the original action from whence it spawned, in a fashion that contributed to the multiplication of fees amongst all the parties and resulted in an administrative morass for the Court. 43 One of the consequences of the plaintiffs' choice to sue hundreds of defendants all at the same time, regardless of the strength of the individual claims, was that the plaintiffs' dragnet inevitably swept up parties against whom they had little or no chance of succeeding. Such is the case here. While the ultimate decision to dismiss the claims against this defendant rested on the statute of limitations, the plaintiffs' claims for contributory infringement and negligence were based on shaky facts and even shakier legal arguments. In response to the defendant's motion for summary judgment, the plaintiffs conceded that they had no claim for direct infringement. Their claim for contributory infringement rested on few facts and on case law that was not factually analogous. 44 While the Court did not reach the merits of the contributory infringement claim, the significance of the statute of limitations defense to this and numerous other Bridgeport cases must be underscored. Many of the songs in question were released in the early and mid 1990's. Many of these cases involve license agreements that were initially negotiated between the plaintiffs and defendants during this same time period. Yet the plaintiffs waited long after the three-year statute of limitations to bring suit. The Court found in this case that the last contact between Diamond Time and the plaintiffs was in December 1995, more than five years before the plaintiffs brought suit. This is not the only Bridgeport case where the plaintiffs' claims were defeated by their failure to act promptly to protect their rights. 45 The plaintiffs complained repeatedly that the dilatory practices of the music industry, resulting in license agreements never or belatedly being signed and payments never or belatedly being made, allowed the defendants in these cases to abuse the plaintiffs' position as a small company and flagrantly use their copyrighted works without proper compensation. The plaintiffs claim that they did not bring suit in a more timely fashion because these practices kept them from enforcing their rights. The Court sees little merit to this argument (and in fact wholly rejected in this case the argument that these practices amounted to a legal justification for avoiding the statute of limitations). 46 If their copyrights are as valuable as the plaintiffs claim, then it behooves them to police their rights and seek legal redress in a timely fashion, especially where their opponents are huge entertainment conglomerates that may not respond to any other pressure than the threat of a suit. And in the case of those defendants like Diamond Time that have limited operations or financial resources, timely filing of legal action against them would increase the chance that the case is decided on the merits of the claim and not subject to the vagaries of missing documents, faulty recollections and absent witnesses. 47 The plaintiffs' failure to weed out stale claims means that there remain in these cases numerous claims and defendants that will never make it to trial. The Court must infer from the plaintiffs' actions that these claims remain for the sole purpose of extracting a settlement based on the cost of litigating further. This is not an objective to be promoted under the Copyright Act; to the contrary, the Court sees an opportunity here to deter further misuse of the Court's resources and encourage the prompt dismissal of clearly stale claims in the hundreds of Bridgeport cases that remain before this Court. 48 255 F.Supp.2d at 798-99 (footnotes omitted). 49 Plaintiffs accuse the district court of palpable hostility toward the legitimate copyright claims asserted in other Bridgeport cases, in which no discovery has even been conducted, and an intention to punish plaintiffs for bringing all of their claims together. While the district court certainly did not mince words, the harsh criticism of the plaintiffs' litigation strategy was clearly focused on the resulting failure of plaintiffs to weed out stale claims against defendants like Diamond Time. 9 50 Urging that we reverse the award, plaintiffs compare this case to Murray Hill, where the district court granted attorney fees to the prevailing defendant because the plaintiff's claims were utterly devoid of merit and the voluminous case was burdensome to both the defendant and the court. 264 F.3d at 639. This court reversed, without much discussion, concluding that the case presented unsettled questions of law and one or more colorable claims of infringement. Id. at 640. When a plaintiff has advanced a reasonable, yet unsuccessful position, an award of attorney fees to the prevailing defendant generally does not promote the purposes of the Copyright Act. Matthew Bender & Co. v. West Pub. Co., 240 F.3d 116, 122 (2d Cir.2001); Lotus Dev. Corp. v. Borland Int'l, Inc., 140 F.3d 70, 75 (1st Cir.1998) (In close infringement cases, the need to encourage meritorious defenses is a factor that a district court may balance against the potentially chilling effect of imposing a large fee award on a plaintiff[] who ... may have advanced a reasonable, albeit unsuccessful, claim.). 51 In this case, however, there can be no doubt that the district court found it was objectively unreasonable for plaintiffs to have argued that the claims against Diamond Time were not time barred. In commenting on the factual and legal weakness of the plaintiffs' contributory infringement claims, the district court clearly criticized the plaintiffs' decision to sue hundreds of defendants at once without regard to the strength of the various claims. 10 52 In addition, the district court inferred from the way the case was commenced and the fact that plaintiffs continued to prosecute this case against Diamond Time that the claims remained for the sole purpose of extracting a settlement based on the cost of litigating further. Bridgeport, 255 F.Supp.2d at 799. Although plaintiffs deny such motivation, the district court certainly had a basis to infer that the litigation was undertaken and prosecuted in a fashion that would multiply the fees and encourage nuisance settlement. We can find no clear error in this regard. 53 Finally, the district court explicitly relied on deterrence, a factor that has an unusual role in this case. Despite plaintiffs' hyperbole about the district court's desire to close the courthouse door to its legitimate, albeit novel, copyright infringement theories, the district court was concerned with deterring misuse of the court's resources and encouraging the prompt dismissal of clearly stale claims in the hundreds of pending Bridgeport cases. Given the common origin of the pending cases and the possibility that similar strategies and motivations may be at work with respect to at least some of the asserted claims, deterrence is a particularly relevant factor in this case weighing in favor of an award of attorney fees.