Court Opinion

ID: 9431054
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:14.772928+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:26.843214
License: Public Domain

Justice Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the peculiar-sounding question whether a party who litigates to judgment and loses on all of his claims can nonetheless be a “prevailing party” for purposes of an award of attorney’s fees.
Following a prison riot at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, inmate Aaron Helms was placed in administrative segregation, a form of restrictive custody, pending an investigation into his possible involvement in the disturbance. More than seven weeks later, a prison hearing committee, relying solely on an officer’s report of the testimony of an undisclosed informant, found Helms guilty of misconduct for striking a corrections officer during the riot. Helms was sentenced to six months of disciplinary restrictive confinement.
While still incarcerated, Helms brought suit under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 against a number of prison officials, alleging that the lack of a prompt hearing on his misconduct charges and his conviction for misconduct on the basis of uncorroborated hearsay testimony violated his rights to due process. The prison officials asserted qualified immunity from suit and contested the constitutional claims on the merits. Before any decision was rendered, Helms was released from prison on parole.
Nearly six months after Helms’ release, the District Court rendered summary judgment against him on his constitu*758tional claims without passing on the defendants’ assertions of immunity. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed, finding that “Helms was denied due process unless he was afforded a hearing, within a reasonable time of his initial [segregative] confinement, to determine whether he represented the type of ‘risk’ warranting administrative detention,” Helms v. Hewitt, 655 F. 2d 487, 500 (1981) (Helms I), and that he “suffered a denial of due process by being convicted on a misconduct charge when the only evidence offered against him was a hearsay recital, by the charging officer, of an uncorroborated report of an unidentified informant.” Id., at 502. The District Court was instructed to enter summary judgment for Helms on the latter claim unless the defendants could establish an immunity defense.
Before the proceedings on remand could take place, we granted certiorari to determine whether Helms’ administrative segregation violated the Due Process Clause. We concluded that the prison’s informal, nonadversarial procedures for determining the need for restrictive custody provided all the process that is due when prisoners are removed from the general prison population. Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U. S. 460 (1983). Certiorari was not sought on, and we did not decide, the question whether Helms’ misconduct conviction violated his constitutional rights. When the case was returned to the Court of Appeals, it therefore reaffirmed its instruction to the District Court to enter judgment for Helms on this claim unless the defendants established a defense of official immunity. Helms v. Hewitt, 712 F. 2d 48 (1983) (Helms II).
In the District Court, Helms pursued only his claims for damages. The District Court granted summary judgment for all the defendants on the basis of qualified immunity, because the constitutional right at issue was not “clearly established,” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800, 818 (1982), at the time of Helms’ misconduct hearing. See App. 22a-47a. Helms appealed, seeking both damages and expungement of his misconduct conviction. The defendants argued to the *759Court of Appeals that all claims for injunctive and declaratory relief had been waived by the failure to pursue them in the District Court, and in any event were moot because Helms was no longer in prison. While that appeal was pending, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Corrections revised its regulations to include for the first time procedures for the use of confidential-source information in inmate disciplinary proceedings. See BC-ADM 801 Administrative Directive: Inmate Disciplinary Procedures §V(F) (1984), App. 101a-102a (Directive 801). The District Court’s decision was affirmed without opinion. Helms v. Hewitt, 745 F. 2d 46 (1984) (Helms III).
Helms then sought attorney’s fees under 42 U. S. C. §1988, which provides in relevant part: “In any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of [§ 1983], the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs.” The District Court denied the claim on the ground that Helms was not a “prevailing party”: the defendants’ official immunity precluded a damages award, Helms’ release from prison made his claims for injunctive relief moot, and he could not claim that his suit was a “catalyst” for the amendment of Directive 801 because he neither sought nor benefited from that action. App. to Pet. for Cert. 27a-39a. The Court of Appeals reversed, concluding that its prior holding that Helms’ constitutional rights were violated was “a form of judicial relief which serves to affirm the plaintiff’s assertion that the defendants’ actions were unconstitutional and which will serve as a standard of conduct to guide prison officials in the future.” 780 F. 2d 367, 370 (1986) (Helms IV). The court also directed the District Court to reconsider whether Helms’ suit was a “catalyst” for the amendment of Directive 801. We granted certiorari. 476 U. S. 1181 (1986).
In order to be eligible for attorney’s fees under § 1988, a litigant must be a “prevailing party.” Whatever the outer boundaries of that term may be, Helms does not fit within *760them. Respect for ordinary language requires that a plaintiff receive at least some relief on the merits of his claim before he can be said to prevail. See Hanrahan v. Hampton, 446 U. S. 754, 757 (1980). Helms obtained no relief. Because of the defendants’ official immunity he received no damages award. No injunction or declaratory judgment was entered in his favor. Nor did Helms obtain relief without benefit of a formal judgment — for example, through a consent decree or settlement. See Maher v. Gagne, 448 U. S. 122, 129 (1980). The most that he obtained was an interlocutory ruling that his complaint should not have been dismissed for failure to state a constitutional claim. That is not the stuff of which legal victories are made. Cf. Hanrahan, supra, at 758-759.
The Court of Appeals treated its 1981 holding that Helms’ misconduct conviction was unconstitutional as “a form of judicial relief” — presumably (since nothing else is even conceivable) a form of declaratory judgment. It was not that. Helms I explicitly left it to the District Court “to determine the appropriateness and availability of the requested relief,” 655 F. 2d, at 503; the Court of Appeals granted no relief of its own, declaratory or otherwise. The petitioners contend that the court in fact could not have granted declaratory or injunctive relief at that point, since all of Helms’ nonmone-tary claims were moot as a result of his release from prison. Even if that is not correct, and Helms’ interest in expungement of the misconduct conviction from his prison record was enough to keep those claims alive, the fact is that Helms’ counsel never took the steps necessary to have a declaratory judgment or expungement order properly entered. Consequently, Helms received no judicial relief.
It is settled law, of course, that relief need not be judicially decreed in order to justify a fee award under § 1988. A lawsuit sometimes produces voluntary action by the defendant that affords the plaintiff all or some of the relief he sought through a judgment — e. g., a monetary settlement or a *761change in conduct that redresses the plaintiff’s grievances. When that occurs, the plaintiff is deemed to have prevailed despite the absence of a formal judgment in his favor. See Maher, supra, at 129. The Court of Appeals held, and Helms argues here, that the statement of law in Helms I that Helms’ disciplinary proceeding was unconstitutional is a “vindication of . . . rights,” Brief for Respondent 19, that is at least the equivalent of declaratory relief, just as a monetary settlement is the informal equivalent of relief by way of damages. To suggest such an equivalency is to lose sight of the nature of the judicial process. In all civil litigation, the judicial decree is not the end but the means. At the end of the rainbow lies not a judgment, but some action (or cessation of action) by the defendant that the judgment produces — the payment of damages, or some specific performance, or the termination of some conduct. Redress is sought through the court, but from the defendant. This is no less true of a declaratory judgment suit than of any other action. The real value of the judicial pronouncement — what makes it a proper judicial resolution of a “case or controversy” rather than an advisory opinion — is in the settling of some dispute which affects the behavior of the defendant towards the plaintiff The “equivalency” doctrine is simply an acknowledgment of the primacy of the redress over the means by which it is obtained. If the defendant, under the pressure of the lawsuit, pays over a money claim before the judicial judgment is pronounced, the plaintiff has “prevailed” in his suit, because he has obtained the substance of what he sought. Likewise in a declaratory judgment action: if the defendant, under pressure of the lawsuit, alters his conduct (or threatened conduct) towards the plaintiff that was the basis for the suit, the plaintiff will have prevailed. That is the proper equivalent of a judicial judgment which would produce the same effect; a judicial statement that does not affect the relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant is not an equivalent. As a consequence of the present lawsuit, Helms obtained nothing *762from the defendants. The only “relief” he received was the moral satisfaction of knowing that a federal court concluded that his rights had been violated. The same moral satisfaction presumably results from any favorable statement of law in an otherwise unfavorable opinion. There would be no conceivable claim that the plaintiff had “prevailed,” for instance, if the District Court in this case had first decided the question of immunity, and the Court of Appeals affirmed in a published opinion which said: “The defendants are immune from suit for damages, and the claim for expungement is either moot or has been waived, but if not for that we would reverse because Helms’ constitutional rights were violated.” That is in essence what happened here, except that the Court of Appeals expressed its view on the constitutional rights before, rather than after, it had become apparent that the issue was irrelevant to the case. There is no warrant for having status as a “prevailing party” depend upon the essentially arbitrary order in which district courts or courts of appeals choose to address issues.
Besides the incompatibility in principle, there is a very practical objection to equating statements of law (even legal holdings en route to a final judgment for the defendant) with declaratory judgments: The equation deprives the defendant of valid defenses to a declaratory judgment to which he is entitled. Imagine that following Helms I, Helms’ counsel, armed with the holding that his client’s constitutional rights had been violated, pressed the District Court for entry of a declaratory judgment. The defendants would then have had the opportunity to contest its entry not only on the ground that the case was moot but also on equitable grounds. The fact that a court can enter a declaratory judgment does not mean that it should. See 28 U. S. C. § 2201 (a court “may declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration”) (emphasis added); Public Affairs Associates, Inc. v. Rickover, 369 U. S. 111, 112 (1962); Eccles v. Peoples Bank of Lakewood, 333 U. S. 426, *763431 (1948). If, for example, Helms I had unambiguously involved only a claim for damages, the requested declaratory judgment would not definitively “settle the controversy between the parties,” 10A C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure §2759, p. 648 (2d ed. 1983), because immunity might still preclude liability. See generally E. Borchard, Declaratory Judgments 299 (2d ed. 1941). If the only effect of a declaratory judgment in those circumstances would be to provide a possible predicate for a fee award against defendants who may ultimately be found immune, and thus to undermine the doctrine of official immunity, it is conceivable that the court might take that into account in deciding whether to enter a judgment. The same considerations may not enter into the decision whether to include statements of law in opinions — or if they do, the court’s decision is not appealable in the same manner as its entry of a declaratory judgment.
We conclude that a favorable judicial statement of law in the course of litigation that results in judgment against the plaintiff does not suffice to render him a “prevailing party.” Any other result strains both the statutory language and common sense.
The Court of Appeals held in the alternative, and Helms argues in the alternative here, that a hearing is needed to determine whether Helms’ lawsuit prompted the Pennsylvania Bureau of Corrections to amend its regulations in 1984 to provide standards for the use of informant testimony at disciplinary hearings. We need not decide the circumstances, if any, under which this “catalyst” theory could justify a fee award under § 1988, because even if Helms can demonstrate a clear causal link between his lawsuit and the State’s amendment of its regulations, and can “prevail” by having the State take action that his complaint did not in terms request, he did not and could not get redress from promulgation of the informant-testimony regulations. When Directive 801 was amended, Helms had long since been released from prison. *764Although he has subsequently been returned to prison, and is presumably now benefiting from the new procedures (to the extent that they influence prison administration even when not directly being applied), that fortuity can hardly render him, retroactively, a “prevailing party” in this lawsuit, even though he was not such when the final judgment was entered.
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the court of appeals is

Reversed.