Court Opinion

ID: 9465653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:52:27.218098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:18.137022
License: Public Domain

*1059ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
Although I concur in the majority views with respect to No. 77 — 1649,1 must respectfully dissent from its decision in No. 77-3434 to affirm the award of attorneys’ fees to the defendant bank.
The trial court awarded attorneys’ fees to the defendant as the “prevailing party” under § 706(k) of Title VII, stating that “in making such determination the Court is not to consider whether the prevailing party is the plaintiff or the defendant in the action giving rise to the request for attorney’s fees. United States v. Allegheny-Ludlum Industries, Inc., 558 F.2d 742 (5th Cir. 1977).”
The Supreme Court has since held that a prevailing defendant may recover from an unsuccessful plaintiff only if the claim was “frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless, or . the plaintiff continued to litigate after it clearly became so.” Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 1978, 434 U.S. 412, 422, 98 S.Ct. 694, 701, 54 L.Ed.2d 648, 657. The Fifth Circuit, therefore, withdrew that part of Allegheny-Ludlum on which the trial court relied in making its award, see United States v. Allegheny-Ludlum Industries, Inc., 5 Cir., 1978, 568 F.2d 1073, 1074.
The language the majority quotes to support its assertion that this suit would have been found by the district court to have been “frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless” is taken from the body of the order granting summary judgment, not from the court’s detailed findings of fact and conclusions of law dealing specifically with the motion for attorneys’ fees. Nowhere in those findings or conclusions is there any intimation that the trial court considered this action totally baseless, or any articulated facts that would justify the majority’s efforts to read the mind of the trial court. Because that court has not had the opportunity to consider the question under the Christiansburg standards, I would vacate the award and remand for reconsideration in light of the intervening Supreme Court case.