Court Opinion

ID: 9431794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:33:13.738085+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:08.909778
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
concurring in the judgment.
For me, the Court’s approach to the difficult problem of an intervenor’s fee liability is not fully satisfying. The Court notes that an intervenor is not like a culpable Title VII defendant because it is not a wrongdoer, and holds that, as a result, the rule that a defendant is presumptively liable for fees if the Title VII plaintiff prevails cannot be applied to an intervenor. The Court also acknowledges that “innocent in-*767tervenors raising non-Title VII claims” are not like Title VII plaintiffs, because they are not “‘the chosen instruments] of Congress’ ” for enforcing the antidiscrimination policies of Title VII. Ante, at 763, quoting Ckristiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U. S. 412, 418 (1978). I agree with each of these observations.
Despite the fact, however, that, from Congress’ point of view, an intervenor is not like a Title VII plaintiff, the Court today fashions a fee-shifting rule that essentially ignores this difference. The result is presumptively to place the additional cost of litigating third-party rights on the prevailing Title VII plaintiff, whom Congress has assumed lacks the resources to bear them.
This result is neither fair nor necessary. It seems to me that the first step toward solving the problem of intervenor fee liability is to recognize that it is the Title VII wrongdoer, and not the Title VII plaintiff, whose conduct has made it necessary to unsettle the expectations of a third party who itself is not responsible for the Title VII plaintiff’s injuries. The Court states that the “defendant will, under Neivmam, be liable for all of the fees expended by the plaintiff in litigating the claim against him,” ante, at 761 (emphasis added) — and thereby tacitly assumes that the defendant’s fee liability goes no further. I see no basis for that assumption. Addressing and adjusting the rights of a third party are parts of the social cost of remedying a Title VII violation. That cost, as well as the cost to the plaintiff of vindicating his or her own rights, would not have existed but for the conduct of the Title VII defendant. I see nothing in the language of the statute or in our precedents to foreclose a prevailing plaintiff from turning to the Title VII defendant for reimbursement of all the costs of obtaining a remedy, including the costs of assuring that third-party interests are dealt with fairly.
Thus, where an intervenor enters the case to defend third-party interests and the plaintiff prevails, the costs of the intervention, in my view, should presumptively be borne by *768the defendant. Such a rule would safeguard the plaintiff’s incentive to enforce Title VII by assuring that the costs of defending against an unsuccessful intervention will be recouped, and would give a plaintiff added incentive to invite intervention by interested third parties, whose concerns can be addressed most fairly and efficiently in the original Title VII proceeding. Cf. Martin v. Wilks, 490 U. S. 755 (1989).
This is not to say that an intervenor may never be held liable for fees. The Court in Christiansburg held that § 706(k) of Title VII must be interpreted as a full-scale departure from the American Rule, in order to assure that no party to a Title VII case has an incentive to maintain a position that is taken in good faith but is nonetheless “groundless.” 434 U. S., at 419. That rule should apply to an intervenor, as well as to a plaintiff. But the adjustment that should take place is one between the Title VII defendant, whose conduct implicated third-party interests, and the intervenor who seeks to protect those interests. In my view, liability for fees should shift from the defendant to the intervenor if the intervenor’s position was “frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation.” Id., at 421. There is no reason why the defendant should be made to pay the cost of frivolous assertions of third-party rights, or that an intervenor should be without incentive to exercise some self-restraint in the position it takes in a Title VII case.
The only potential “disadvantage” to the rule I would adopt is that it would diminish, to some extent, the gains a Title VII defendant could reap from settlement: under my rule, the defendant’s fee liability would not cease with its decision to settle the case. The result will not be to deter all settlements, however: it will deter only those that unfairly impose disproportionate costs on third parties.
An examination of the considerations that enter into a settlement decision explains why this is so. As a general rule, a defendant framing a settlement offer considers his remedial *769exposure in the event the plaintiff prevails at trial, and discounts it by the likelihood that the plaintiff will not prevail. For those aspects of the settlement package that come at the employer’s expense — e. g., backpay — the employer’s settlement offer likely will reflect these considerations. But the Title VII defendant has little incentive to make a similar calculation for elements of the settlement package that burden only third parties — e. g., competitive seniority. Indeed, a defendant has every reason to impose a disproportionate share of the remedial costs of settling a case on third parties, whose interests are not represented in the settlement negotiations. For this reason, a settlement that reasonably serves the employer’s needs might well fall short of reasonableness from the point of view of a rational third party.
Under the rule I would adopt, a district court would be permitted to consider the settlement agreement’s fairness to third parties as a factor in determining whether the interve-nor’s opposition to the settlement was reasonable. The in-tervenor therefore would have the incentive to acquiesce in a settlement proposal that fairly assesses the likely result at trial, because intervention to oppose a settlement which is fair across the board will expose the intervenor to fee liability. And the defendant would have the incentive to consider third-party interests in its settlement proposal, lest it be assessed attorney’s fees when third parties reasonably intervene to object to a settlement that is unfair from their point of view. This would be a desirable result, not a reason to reject the fee-shifting rule I propose.
Accordingly, I concur in the judgment of the Court to reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and to remand the case for further proceedings. But I do not join the Court’s opinion insofar as it requires a prevailing plaintiff to bear the cost of intervention-related attorney’s fees unless the intervenor’s position is found to be “frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation.” That result needlessly burdens the Title VII plaintiff with litigation costs imposed on *770the plaintiff by the unlawful conduct of the Title VII defendant, and compromises Congress’ interest in furthering private enforcement of Title VII.
On remand of this case, the court, if it followed my view, first would determine whether the union’s position in opposition to the settlement was frivolous or unreasonable. If the court so concluded, the union would be liable for fees. But if the court concluded that the union’s position had sufficient merit to bar the assessment of fees against it, the court would go on to consider whether, in the posture of the case, the plaintiffs may recover their attorney’s fees from TWA. In particular, the court would determine whether the plaintiffs have preserved a claim for additional fees against TWA and, if so, whether the provisions of the settlement agreement that governs TWA’s fee liability foreclose any additional fee award. If the claim has been preserved and additional fees may be recovered from TWA consistent with the settlement agreement, the plaintiffs would be entitled to recover from TWA the attorney’s fees due to the intervention.