Court Opinion

ID: 9796220
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:52:18.093802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:48:15.307331
License: Public Domain

ARMSTRONG, J.,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that defendant is the prevailing party for purposes of an award of attorney fees under ORS 90.255 because the court dismissed plaintiffs action to recover his personal property from defendant. In its view, it does not matter that the trial court dismissed the action as moot on the ground that plaintiff had recovered his property independently of the action. I respectfully disagree. Although dismissal of an action normally makes the defendant the prevailing party in it, that is not necessarily the case when the dismissal occurs because events independent of the action have caused the action to become moot.
Assume, for these purposes, that defendant had wrongfully withheld plaintiff’s property and did not intend to return it. After plaintiff filed his action to recover his property, an employee of defendant mistakenly gives plaintiff the property. The action would then be moot, and the court would have to dismiss it. According to the majority, the dismissal would make defendant the prevailing party even though the dismissal occurred because plaintiff had recovered his wrongfully withheld property from defendant independently of the action. I do not believe that ORS 90.255 and the other, equivalent statutes that govern the award of costs and attorney fees to the party “in whose favor final judgment is rendered” must be understood to require that result.
I believe that the attorney-fee language in ORS 90.255 and equivalent statutes can be interpreted in four, alternative ways. One is the interpretation that plaintiff advances. Under it, even though plaintiff recovered his property, the court still would have to determine if defendant had wrongfully withheld it. The resolution of that issue would determine who prevailed in the action and, consequently, who was entitled to seek an award of attorney fees. Notwithstanding the cases that plaintiff cites as support for that interpretation,11 agree with the majority that the legislature did not intend the attorney-fee language to work that way.
*247Another interpretation is the one that the majority settles on. Under it, there must always be a prevailing party in an action, and the defendant is the prevailing party if the judgment dismisses the action. I reject that interpretation. In most cases in which an action is dismissed, it is appropriate to consider the defendant to be the party in whose favor the final judgment is rendered. However, when an action is dismissed because it has become moot as a result of events occurring after and independently of the filing of the action, I do not believe that the judgment dismissing the action necessarily must be understood to be in the defendant’s favor. In contrast to all other dismissals, such a dismissal is one in which the court has lost the ability to give relief to any party, so the judgment that dismisses the action is one that does not favor either party.
A third interpretation is the one that I have described in rejecting the majority’s holding. Under it, when independent events result in the dismissal of an action as moot, neither party prevails for purposes of awarding attorney fees.
A final alternative interpretation is one that embodies a “catalyst” principle, in which an action that is dismissed as moot as a result of independent events can have a prevailing party. However, the designation of that party depends on whether one of the parties can establish that the action became moot because of independent steps that the other party took to avoid potential liability in the action.2
There is no legislative history or other information of which I am aware that provides useful guidance on which of the alternative interpretations of the attorney-fee language in ORS 90.255 is correct. I believe, however, that the third alternative interpretation most likely reflects the legislature’s intended policy on the designation of prevailing parties and the award of attorney fees in residential landlord-tenant litigation. Because the trial court’s rejection of an award of *248attorney fees in this case is consistent with that interpretation, I dissent from the majority’s decision to reverse the trial court judgment.

 See Edwards v. Fenn, 308 Or 129, 775 P2d 1375 (1989); Pacific N.W. Dev. Corp. v. Holloway, 274 Or 367, 546 P2d 1063 (1976).

 See, e.g., Little Rock School Dist. v. Pulaski County Special School Dist. # 1, 17 F3d 260, 262-63 (8th Cir 1994) (plaintiffs entitled to attorney fees as prevailing parties in civil rights litigation where lawsuit was catalyst for voluntary action by defendant that rendered lawsuit moot).