Cite as: 508 U. S. 49 (1993)
Stevens, J., concurring in judgment
at issue here, the question whether that suit was objectively baseless is purely one of law, which we are obliged to consider de novo. There is therefore no need to frame the question in the Court of Appeals's terms. Accordingly, I would prefer to put the question in our own terms, and to conclude simply that, on the undisputed facts and the law as it stood when Columbia filed its suit, a reasonable litigant could realistically have expected success on the merits.
My preference stems from a concern that other courts could read today's opinion as transplanting every substantive nuance and procedural quirk of the common-law tort of wrongful civil proceedings into federal antitrust law. I do not understand the Court to mean anything of the sort, however, any more than I understand its citation of Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, see ante, at 65, to signal the importation of every jot and tittle of the law of attorney sanctions. Rather, I take the Court's use of the term "probable cause" merely as shorthand for a reasonable litigant's realistic expectation of success on the merits, and on that understanding, I join the Court's opinion.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice O'Connor joins, concurring in the judgment.
While I agree with the Court's disposition of this case and with its holding that "an objectively reasonable effort to litigate cannot be sham regardless of subjective intent," ante, at 57, I write separately to disassociate myself from some of the unnecessarily broad dicta in the Court's opinion. Specifically, I disagree with the Court's equation of "objectively baseless" with the answer to the question whether any "reasonable litigant could realistically expect success on the merits." 1 There might well be lawsuits that fit the latter defi-1 Ante, at 60. See also ante, at 62: "[S]ham litigation must constitute the pursuit of claims so baseless that no reasonable litigant could realistically expect to secure favorable relief "; ante, at 60: "If an objective litigant could conclude that the suit is reasonably calculated to elicit a favorable
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