A recent NLJ story, “Justices Allow Attorney Fee Awards Without Victory on Merits,” reports that, in a ruling that could mean more attorney fee awards for employers in workplace discrimination cases, the U.S. Supreme Court said defendants don’t have to win on the merits to be counted as the “prevailing party.”

The court’s unanimous ruling (pdf) in CRST Van Expedited v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was a victory for the trucking company accused of sexual harassment, and for Paul Smith of Jenner & Block, who represented the company.

At issue was whether the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was obliged to give the Iowa trucking company an attorney fee award when its sexual harassment claims against the company were dismissed because the commission bungled the case.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act calls for awarding attorney fees to a defendant in an employment discrimination case only when the plaintiffs' claims are "frivolous, unreasonable or without foundation."

After a district court dismissed the EEOC's claims, the parties went through several rounds of litigation over legal fees.  CRST Van Expedited Inc. has already paid the fees to Jenner & Block, so the company would receive the $4.5 million fee award from the EEOC, not the law firm, after the Eighth Circuit reviews the fee on remand.

In its second decision on the issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in 2014 sided with the EEOC, ruling that it is not possible to determine that the EEOC's case against the company was frivolous "without a judicial determination of the plaintiff's case on the merits."  But the Supreme Court rejected that interpretation.

“A favorable ruling on the merits is not a necessary predicate to find that a defendant has prevailed,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court.  “Common sense undermines the notion that a defendant cannot ‘prevail’ unless the relevant disposition is on the merits.”

For a defendant, Kennedy said, prevailing can take many forms, including dismissal of claims for reasons other than the merits of the case.  “The defendant has … fulfilled its primary objective whenever the plaintiff’s challenge is rebuffed, irrespective of the precise reason for the court’s decision,” Kennedy wrote.