McCarthy v. Darman - ED Pa. - September 9, 2009
http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/09D1126P.pdf
42 U.S.C. § 1988 allows a court to award attorneys’ fees to the prevailing party in a § 1983 case. Defendants in a § 1983 action are eligible to recover attorneys’ fees under § 1988, but a prevailing defendant must meet a more stringent standard than a prevailing plaintiff in order to do so.... A prevailing defendant should only be awarded attorneys’ fees if the plaintiff’s claim was “frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless, or . . . the plaintiff continued to litigate after it clearly became so.”
The Third Circuit has articulated several factors that should be considered when determining whether a claim was frivolous, including “whether the plaintiff established a prima facie case, the defendant offered to settle, the trial court dismissed the case prior to trial or the case continued until a trial on the merits.” In addition, the court should consider whether the issues litigated were ones of first impression, and what the real risk of the alleged injury was to the plaintiff.
Each case must be decided individually, however, and these factors are “guidelines, not strict rules.” “[I]t is important that a district court resist the understandable temptation to engage in post hoc reasoning by concluding that, because a plaintiff did not ultimately prevail, his action must have been unreasonable or without foundation.”
In this case, the court held that plaintiff's substantive due process claims were frivolous but that his procedure due process claims were not, so the defendant's claim for fees was denied.
