Court Opinion

ID: 9452740
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:50:15.865493+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:20.313749
License: Public Domain

WINTER, Circuit Judge, with whom SOBELOFF, Circuit Judge, joins
(concurring specially):
Wholeheartedly I agree that Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S. C.A. § 2000a et seq., is applicable to Piggie Park’s drive-in type facilities, and I join in the reasons advanced for that conclusion. I agree also that the case should be remanded for consideration of an award of counsel fees, but I conclude that good faith, standing alone, should not always immunize a defendant from an award against him. Specifically, in this case, defendants are not entitled to the defense of good faith in regard to the major portion of their defenses.
■ The district judge is told that in exercising his discretion he should “consider whether any of the numerous defenses interposed by defendants were presented for purposes of delay and not in good faith” because no defendant ought to. be punished for “taking a position in court in which he honestly believes— however lacking in merit that position may be.” (emphasis supplied) In this case, defendants interposed defenses patently frivolous, and I would not permit them to avoid the costs of overcoming such defenses on a purely subjective test of good faith.
In providing for counsel fees, the manifest purposes of the Act are to discourage violations, to encourage complaints, by those subjected to discrimination and to provide a speedy and efficient remedy for those discriminated against. If counsel fees are withheld or grudgingly granted, violators feel no sanctions, victims are frustrated and instances of unquestionably illegal discrimination may well go without effective remedy. To. immunize defendants from an award of counsel fees, honest beliefs should bear some reasonable relation to reality; never should frivolity go unrecognized.
While the threat of an award of counsel fees ought not to be used to discourage non-frivolous defenses asserted in good faith, the district court should be instructed to make an allowance in regard to some of defendants’ defenses, and, in its discretion, to consider an allowance for the remainder of defendants’ defenses depending upon its determination of defendants’ good faith and honest belief. Those clearly compensable are defendants’ assertion that, their “Little Joe’s Sandwich Shop,” a sit-down facility shown overwhelmingly by the proof to be a place where service, was refused to Negro citizens, was not. subject to the Act. The fact that the-*438defendants had discriminated both at Piggie Park’s drive-ins and at Little Joe’s Sandwich Shop was of course known to them, yet they denied the fact and made it necessary for the plaintiffs to offer proof, and the defendants could not and did not undertake at the trial to support their denials. Includable in the same category are defendants’ contention, twice pleaded after the decision in Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294, 85 S.Ct. 6 (1964), that the Act was unconstitutional on the very grounds foreclosed by McClung; and defendants’ contention that the Act was invalid because it “contravenes the will of God” and constitutes an interference with the “free exercise of the Defendant’s religion.” The district judge should be told that, in awarding counsel fees, he should include an amount which fully compensates plaintiffs for the time, effort and expenses of counsel in overcoming these elements of expense needlessly imposed on them.
Only as to the remaining defenses do I think that defendants’ good faith is the issue. If good faith is found not to have existed as to them, an additional award of counsel fees on a like basis should be made.