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Equal Access to Justice Act: Court Awards of Attorney’s Fees for
Unreasonable Government Conduct (Part One),” 55 La. L. Rev. 217,
343 (1994); see, e.g., Grason Elec. Co. v. NLRB, 951 F.2d 1100
(9th Cir. 1991) (real parties in interest in EAJA case included
all 48 members of multiemployer collective bargaining association
who financed the litigation, not just the 6 members who were
parties to the litigation). The case for looking beyond the
named parties is particularly compelling in these proceedings,
where similarly situated taxpayers not only shared the costs of
the litigation but also “had rights at stake in the case on the
merits”. Sisk, supra at 346 (arguing that one can be a real
party in interest with respect to an EAJA fee request--and
thereby potentially entitled to recover the requested fees--only
by virtue of one’s status as a real party in interest in the
underlying litigation on the merits; i.e., that financial
responsibility for the claimed legal fees does not confer real
party in interest status).25
We now hold that the real parties in interest in this
litigation include not only the test case petitioners and
participating nontest case petitioners, but also all other
25 Conversely, Professor Sisk reasons, a real party in
interest who has no financial responsibility for legal fees
cannot recover those fees under the EAJA for the simple reason
that such person has not “incurred” any fees as required by the
statute. Sisk, “The Essentials of the Equal Access to Justice
Act: Court Awards of Attorney’s Fees for Unreasonable Government
Conduct (Part One),” 55 La. L. Rev. 217, 346-347 (1994).
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