Court Opinion

ID: 9479489
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:20:04.668254+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:04.667947
License: Public Domain

SELYA, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
Although most of the issues presented by this appeal have been appropriately resolved, I think that Part VII of the court’s opinion goes too far. Therein, the court not only approves an award of counsel fees for time reasonably spent preparing the EAJA fee application — a determination with which I concur — but also approves an award for time spent defending the fee request against what appears to be the government’s substantially-justified opposition.15 Time consumed compiling the EAJA application is one thing; time consumed litigating it is quite another. The two are separate inquiries, each of which must stand on its own footing. They are not joined at the chest like the EAJA equivalent of Chang and Eng. Because I believe that the Act is not so elastic as automatically to reach, and compensate a prevailing *1482party for, the latter kind of attorneys’ time, I respectfully dissent.
We have said before that, “[b]eeause EAJA constitutes a waiver of sovereign immunity ... its words must be narrowly construed and its borders rigorously observed.” In re Perry, 882 F.2d 534, 538 (1st Cir.1989). Moreover, “[t]he availability of attorneys’ fees against the federal government under EAJA is much less expansively expressed [than under 42 U.S.C. § 1988]. There is no automatic shifting of fees comparable to that which occurs under section 1988.” Id., at 544 n. 8 (emphasis in original) (citing Sierra Club v. Secretary of the Army, 820 F.2d 513, 516-17 (1st Cir.1987)).
Against this backdrop, I can agree with my colleagues that time reasonably spent compiling an EAJA application may be compensable in a proper case. In my view, such work is a necessary extension of the litigation on the merits. Cf. Sullivan v. Hudson, — U.S. -, -, 109 S.Ct. 2248, 2258, 104 L.Ed.2d 941 (1989) (EAJA extends to matters which “are an integral part” of underlying civil action). It is the only way counsel can bring the matter of statutory entitlement before the court. Furthermore, “[cjounsel must prepare the EAJA fee application whether or not the government subsequently decides to contest the amount of attorney’s fees claimed or the award of attorney’s fees.” Kelly v. Bowen, 862 F.2d 1333, 1334 (8th Cir.1988). If the conditions for EAJA entitlement are met vis-a-vis the merits of the main dispute, that time should be compensable. Accord id.; Lee v. Johnson, 799 F.2d 31, 39-40 (3d Cir.1986).
But once the EAJA application is prepared and filed, and the government mounts a challenge to it, a different situation obtains. If — for whatever reason — the government’s opposition to the fee award is found to be “substantially justified,” 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A), I can find nothing in the language or legislative history of EAJA, as originally enacted or amended, or in its goals and purposes, which indicates to my satisfaction that Congress intended the government to reimburse plaintiffs for litigating the fee question.
In amending EAJA to clarify that the reasonableness of the government’s litigation position on the merits was not sufficient to preclude a fee award where the government’s underlying position was not also reasonable, Congress was concerned that:
If the government’s litigation position was the sole consideration, the government could insulate itself from fee liability simply by conceding error or settling, because such actions will always be deemed “reasonable” litigation positions; thereby having the effect of substantially justifying their position. Interpreting the EAJA so as to restrict its application to mere litigation arguments and not the underlying action which made the suit necessary, would remove the very incentive for careful agency action that Congress hoped to create in 1980.
H.R.Rep. No. 120, 99th Cong., 1st Sess. 12, reprinted in 1985 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 132, 141. Yet, these concerns are not implicated by independent consideration of the reasonableness of the government’s opposition to a fee award. A fee contest is separate from the main event. Whether or not the government’s opposition to fees is found to be “substantially justified,” there is no opportunity for post-hoc retrieval of spilt milk, nor any suggestion that private parties will thereby be denied recompense for work related to the underlying litigation. The “incentive for careful agency action,” id., will remain completely intact. What is more, a similar incentive would arise as to fees — for, if the government chose to contest an EAJA application imprudently, i.e., without substantial justification, then the United States would be fully subject to an incremental award for services rendered in the fee litigation itself.
On the other hand, the majority’s approach unbalances the incentives. It gives a prevailing party who “goes for broke” on a fee application nothing to lose and everything to gain. The more esurient the request, the more likely the government will *1483oppose it; the more heroic the opposition, the more time will reasonably be spent litigating the matter; the more protracted the litigation, the greater the number of hours reasonably expended on it; the more hours spent, the higher the fee award (notwithstanding whatever trimming may be done in the name of “reasonableness”). I simply do not believe that Congress meant to put the government in such a “heads-we-lose, tails-you-win” position.16
I am neither oblivious to, nor enchanted by the prospect of, the infinite regression of fee-award litigation forecast by my brethren. Ante at 1481. Yet, we have no right, in the name of judicial economy, to expand EAJA’s sweep or to open the sovereign’s coffers more widely than Congress intended. Because of the need to afford the Act a narrow construction, and my concerns that the law not be twisted to create a disincentive for the government’s resistance to overreaching on the part of those presumptively eligible for fee-shifting under EAJA, I am led to believe that the Third, Seventh, and Eighth Circuits have correctly solved this Rubic’s cube. See Lee, 799 F.2d at 39-40; Continental Web Press, Inc. v. NLRB, 767 F.2d 321, 324 (7th Cir.1985); Cornella v. Schweiker, 741 F.2d 170, 171-72 (8th Cir.1984). Therefore, I dissent from the indicated portion of the court’s opinion.

.The majority, by virtue of its view of controlling legal principles, does not reach the question of whether the government’s opposition to plaintiffs’ fee application was “substantially justified.” I believe that the record amply illustrates the existence of such substantial justification.

. I am also constrained to note that, by “re-servfing] judgment” about cases where the government raises a technical defense to an EAJA application, ante at 1481 n. 13, the majority seems to be walking both sides of the street. If the absence of substantial justification for the underlying agency action confers entitlement to an EAJA award for the time spent litigating the award, then the presence of a "technical defense — such as untimely filing,” id. (citation omitted), can make no logical difference. Conversely, if the footnote represents a concession that the reasonableness of the government’s position in litigation over fees should be treated differently from the reasonableness of its position on the merits, then the court’s main holding in Part VII must be wrong. I see no principled basis for treating "technical” defenses in EAJA fee litigation any differently from other defenses (such as substantial justification).