Cite as: 505 U. S. 557 (1992)
Blackmun, J., dissenting
litigation is less remunerative than private litigation, then the only attorneys who will take such cases will be underemployed lawyers—who likely will be less competent than the successful, busy lawyers who would shun federal fee-bearing litigation—and public interest lawyers who, by any measure, are insufficiently numerous to handle all the cases for which other competent attorneys cannot be found. See Delaware Valley II, 483 U. S., at 742-743 (dissenting opinion).
In many cases brought under federal statutes that authorize fee shifting, plaintiffs will be unable to ensure that their attorneys will be compensated for the risk that they might not prevail. This will be true in precisely those situations targeted by the fee-shifting statutes—where plaintiffs lack sufficient funds to hire an attorney on a win-or-lose basis and where potential damages awards are insufficient to justify a standard contingent-fee arrangement. In these situations, unless the fee-shifting statutes are construed to compensate attorneys for the risk of nonpayment associated with loss, the expected return from cases brought under federal fee-shifting provisions will be less than could be obtained in otherwise comparable private litigation offering guaranteed, win-or-lose compensation. Prudent counsel, under these conditions, would tend to avoid federal fee-bearing claims in favor of private litigation, even in the very situations for which the attorney's fee statutes were designed. This will be true even if the fee-bearing claim is more likely meritorious than the competing private claim.
In Delaware Valley II, five Justices of this Court concluded that for these reasons the broad statutory term "reasonable attorney's fee" must be construed to permit, in some circumstances, compensation above the hourly win-or-lose rate generally borrowed to compute the lodestar fee. See 483 U. S., at 731, 732-733 (O'Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); id., at 735 (dissenting opinion). Together with the three Justices who joined my dissenting opinion in that case, I would have allowed enhancement
569
Page: Index Previous 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007