Court Opinion

ID: 9475852
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:40:08.933625+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:58.606192
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree that Weinstein must lose in all branches of his case, although I believe that the majority inaccurately diminishes Weinstein’s complaint by saying that it involves only the order of authors’ names. Maj. op. at 1092. Weinstein also alleges that the procedure employed by the university to evaluate him for a tenured position denied him due process, that the publication of his article in a revised form denied him his property interest in the writing without due process and that the university violated his first amendment rights. *1099Although Weinstein does not win on any of these claims, his suit is not as meritless as the majority’s brief description of the dispute implies.
With respect to the literary property claim, I am less inclined than the majority to concede the existence of state action. As the majority points out, this is essentially a contract controversy between two professors. The involvement of the state in this private dispute can be described as peripheral at best. If the state did not deprive Weinstein of his property interest, we need not discuss the relative virtues of pre- and post-deprivation remedies.
In any event, I cannot join in the portion of the majority opinion that awards attorney’s fees on appeal with respect to the discharge claim. The university did not request fees and I have serious doubts whether, in the ordinary case and absent egregious circumstances, we should reach out to make fee awards based only on our own assessment of lack of merit. This is bound to be a capricious business, punishing some while far worse offenders go unsanctioned.1 And it may have an undue chilling effect on litigation — good and bad alike. More important, as in other sua sponte dispositions, litigants have no opportunity to speak in their own defense. The defects in the discharge allegation here suggest a serious misreading of the elements of a due process claim rather than bad faith of any kind.
Of course, the courts have a strong interest — quite apart from that of the litigants — in discouraging frivolous litigation. It is also arguable that the discharge claim here is sufficiently meritless to at least border on the frivolous. But the university may have reasons of its own not to request fees and quite possibly those reasons outweigh in this case the public interest in discouraging poorly supported lawsuits.
I therefore respectfully dissent from the award of fees.

. It might be fairer just to adopt the English rule and say, "If you lose, you pay.”