Court Opinion

ID: 9496250
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:21:34.346499+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:27.138343
License: Public Domain

RADER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The United States Court of International Trade remanded this case for further adjudication without reaching the merits. Nonetheless, Judges Clevenger and Dyk would endow the remandees with the laurels of victory and grant them the attorney fees spoils after their prevailing legal conquest. Because anointing these reman-dees as “prevailing parties” also defies the Supreme Court’s holdings in Buckhannon, Hudson, and Schaefer, I dissent.
In Buckhannon, the Supreme Court set the standard for a party to prevail. Judges Clevenger and Dyk conclude that Buckhannon’s language about “some relief on the merits” permits a party who has done no more than secure a procedural remand to qualify as a “prevailing party.” Buckhannon does not, however, hold that a party prevails merely by securing “some relief on the merits.” Buckhannon states that a party that has won a judgment secures some relief on the merits “regardless of the amount of damages.” Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 603, 121 S.Ct. 1835. The Court elaborates that “even an award of nominal damages” is some relief on the merits sufficient to allow prevailing party status. Id. Therefore, securing “some relief on the merits” affords prevailing party status when that relief is a judgment on the merits including damages, regardless of the amount.
*1369Buckhannon delineates those legal victories that warrant an award of attorney fees. According to the Supreme Court, judgments on the merits and settlement agreements enforced by a consent decree entitle a party to claim the rewards of prevailing. Id. at 603-04, 121 S.Ct. 1835. An interlocutory ruling that reverses a dismissal for failure to state a claim, for example, and legal victories based on the catalyst theory do not permit prevailing party status. Id. at 605, 121 S.Ct. 1835. Here, a remand to an agency for reconsideration is far from a judgment on the merits or consent decree and more akin to an interlocutory ruling that reverses a dismissal for failure to state a claim. Moreover, because the Department of Labor requested the remand, the most that the remandees can claim is that their appeal brought about a voluntary change in the agency’s conduct. In other words, the re-mandees claim prevailing party status based on the same catalyst theory overruled in Buckhannon.
With Buckhannon a formidable obstacle to fees, Judges Clevenger and Dyk reach out to Hudson and Schaefer for the proposition that a remand to an administrative agency constitutes some relief on the merits. Hudson and Schaefer address remands under sentence four and sentence six of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 405(g) (2000). A sentence four remand requires a judgment to accompany the remand order. A sentence six remand requires that the district court retain jurisdiction and that the party return to the district court after the post remand proceedings to allow the district court to enter a final judgment. Thus, both sentence four and sentence six remands permit prevailing party status, not because the remand is securing some vague relief on the merits, but because the remand includes a judgment on the merits consistent with Buckhannon. The statutory language itself requires a judgment on the merits to accompany any remand in the “unusual” setting of the Social Security Act. Hudson, 490 U.S. at 885, 109 S.Ct. 2248 (The SSA statute suggests “a degree of direct interaction between a federal court and an administrative agency alien to traditional review of agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act.”) (emphasis added). Thus, a remand in this unusual statutory framework includes a judgment and fits within the Buckhannon rule for prevailing party status.
EAJA permits “a prevailing party” to recoup attorney fees incurred “in a civil action.” 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(B) (2002). Remandees in the present case, however, did not prevail in a civil litigation. After remand, the Department awarded reman-dees the certification they sought. Re-mandees then filed an Order of Dismissal. The district court granted the order without hearing the merits, reaching a conclusion, or entering a judgment. Remandees, therefore, did not prevail in a civil litigation.
Although Judges Clevenger and Dyk rely on the Supreme Court’s Social Security cases, those same cases recognized that a remand absent a judgment in a civil litigation does not afford prevailing party status. In Melkonyan v. Sullivan, 501 U.S. 89, 94, 111 S.Ct. 2157, 115 L.Ed.2d 78 (1991), the Court stated that the petitioner would be entitled to attorney fees if the Secretary returned to the district court after a sentence six remand to allow the district court to enter final judgment. The Court noted, however, that
[l]f the court’s order was, in effect, a dismissal under Rule 41(a), the District Court’s jurisdiction over the case would have ended at that point, and petitioner would not have been a prevailing party “in [a] civil action.” 28 U.S.C. *1370§ 2412(d)(1)(A). Under those circumstances, the Secretary would not return to the District Court and petitioner would not be eligible to receive EAJA fees.
Melkonyan, 501 U.S. at 95, 111 S.Ct. 2157. Because present remandees dismissed their case, they did not prevail in a civil litigation.