Court Opinion

ID: 9486912
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:03:54.832242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:00.450722
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
It seems to me that the majority opinion is a triumph of technicality over thoughtfulness. Both the defendant and the majority make much of the statutory language awarding fees “in addition to a judgment awarded to the plaintiff.” This seems to me to communicate the idea that the plaintiffs lawyers do not share in the plaintiffs winnings but receive something in addition to them. Compare § 201(e) with § 501(a) (only other provision of LMRDA expressly allowing attorneys’ fees requires fees be deducted from judgment). When, with benefit to all, the litigation is settled with an award to the plaintiff but with a technical “judgment” dismissing the action, it does violence to common understanding to say somehow that the defendant has “won” a judgment rather than the plaintiff.
The absence of the phrase “prevailing party” from the language of the LMRDA, the FLSA and the Family and Medical Leave Act (and the majority views these statutes as equivalent in the fees area) is without significance. The legislative history of the FMLA (which unlike the LMRDA or FLSA was enacted against the backdrop of the very comprehensive § 1988 regime) is replete with references to “prevailing plaintiffs.” See H.R.Rep. No. 103-8, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1 (1993) (“court has no discretion to deny fees to a prevailing plaintiff’); Sen.Rep. No. 103-3,103d Cong., 1st Sess. (1993), reprinted in 1993 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3, 47 (“Prevailing plaintiffs are entitled to a reasonable attorneys’ fee.”). And the lengthy floor debate of the *321Grassley Amendment to the FMLA, requiring non-binding arbitration before suit, makes clear that everyone recognized that the FMLA broadly adopted the British rule awarding attorneys’ fees to the prevailing party. See 139 Cong.Rec. S 1105 (daily ed. Feb. 3, 1994) (statement of Sen. Dodd). To me the express reference to “prevailing party” analysis — derived straight from § 1988 and its extensive case law — in the legislative history of the FMLA suggests that Congress intended both it and the LMRDA to follow the § 1988 model.
Moreover, Fogerty, as the majority indicates, counsels that attorneys’ fees provisions should turn in part on the purpose of the underlying statute. — U.S. at —, 114 S.Ct. at 1027-28. In Fogerty, the Supreme Court found that the history and policies behind the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 505, were sufficiently different from those of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that the similar fee-shifting provisions required different interpretations. Id. “Often times in the civil rights context, impecunious ‘private attorney general’ plaintiffs can ill afford to litigate their claims against defendants with more resources. Congress sought to redress this balance in part, to provide incentives for the bringing of meritorious lawsuits.... ” Id. The LMRDA likewise was enacted to strengthen the hand of union members to achieve the Act’s “primary objective of ensuring that unions will be democratically governed and responsive to the will of their memberships.” Finnegan v. Leu, 456 U.S. 431, 102 S.Ct. 1867, 72 L.Ed.2d 239 (1982); cf. Landry v. Sabine Independent Seamen’s Ass’n, 623 F.2d 347, 350 (5th Cir.1980) (“The LMRDA, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is a remedial statute”). The majority is of course correct that simply calling the LMRDA a remedial act does not mandate this interpretation of § 201(c). But the linkage of the FMLA and LMRDA in both purpose and structure — as reflected in the legislative history — suggests application along the lines of the § 1988 cases. The language of § 201(c) does not compel the majority’s result, and the policies of the LMRDA and the history of the more recent statute with the same fee provision (the FMLA) cut strongly against it. I therefore respectfully dissent.