National Ass'n of Mfrs. v. U.S. Dept. of Labor

• Decision Date: 24 April 1997
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 95-0715 (RCL).
• Citation: 962 F.Supp. 191
• Parties: NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

962 F.Supp. 191

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, Defendant.

Civil Action No. 95-0715 (RCL).

United States District Court, District of Columbia.

April 24, 1997.

Hamilton Loeb, Behnam Dayanim, Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, Washington, D.C., for plaintiff.

Sandra M. Schraibman, Kathryn D. Ray, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

LAMBERTH, District Judge.

This case comes before the court pursuant to plaintiff National Association of Manufacturers' ("NAM") application for reasonable attorney's fees, expenses and costs incurred in their prosecution of this action. The Association files for this award pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2412(a) and (d), the Equal Access to Justice Act ("EAJA"). For the reasons contained herein, this court grants the plaintiff's application for an award under the EAJA. The defendant United States Department of Labor ("DOL") will be ordered to compensate NAM in the amount of $41,145.59.

DISCUSSION

I. PRIOR CASE HISTORY

The NAM's initial complaint was filed with this court on April 14, 1995. The complaint challenged fifteen separate components of the DOL's rules governing the H-1B visa program, a program that allows United States companies to employ aliens with "specialty occupation" skills that could benefit the employer. In time, both sides moved for summary judgment.

On July 22, 1996, this court partially granted and denied both motions for summary judgment. The NAM successfully established that six significant components of the H-1B program promulgated by the DOL did not comply with the notice and comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA"), 5 U.S.C. § 553(b)(3) (1994). Accordingly, this court granted partial summary judgment to the NAM, electing to set aside the six violative components. In addition, this court rejected the NAM's challenge to six of the H-1B components, and found that the challenge to three of the components was not yet ripe for review. This court therefore granted partial summary judgment to the DOL on these nine issues.

A. The NAM's Application

The NAM now submits an application pursuant to the EAJA seeking an award for the reasonable attorney's fees, expenses, and costs incurred in the prosecution of this action. The EAJA states as follows:

Except as otherwise specifically provided by statute, a court shall award to a prevailing party ... fees and other expenses, in addition to any costs ... unless the court finds that the position of the United States was substantially justified or that special circumstances make an award unjust.

28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A) (1994).

By not challenging the NAM in their opposition brief, the DOL effectively concedes that the NAM is in fact a prevailing party for the purposes of the statute.¹ In addition, the DOL did not assert the existence of any special circumstances that would make a fee award unjust or inequitable. The DOL does, however, challenge the NAM's ability to satisfy other requirements of the statute.

II. ELIGIBILITY UNDER THE EAJA

First, the DOL claims that the NAM is not a party eligible to receive attorney's fees and expenses under the EAJA.² According to the statute, any association whose net worth exceeds $7,000,000 or whose size exceeds 500 employees at the time the civil action was filed is ineligible to receive an award as a prevailing party. 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(B)(ii) (1994).

The NAM itself clearly satisfies these two criteria: it has a net worth below the $7,000,000 ceiling and employs less than 500 employees. Decl. of Linda Chandler at 1-2. The DOL contends, however, that since the lawsuit was brought on behalf of the NAM's numerous members, the court should utilize the aggregate of the members' net worth and employee numbers in determining the NAM's eligibility under the EAJA. The NAM members include giant international corporations whose net worth and employee payroll greatly exceed the EAJA cap.³ In addition, corporations such as these serve to benefit from the NAM's successful challenge to the violative H-1B components. In light of this, the DOL posits that the aggregate, and not merely the NAM's individual figures, should be used to determine its EAJA eligibility.

In making this claim, the DOL relies primarily on two cases: Unification Church v. INS, 762 F.2d 1077 (D.C.Cir.1985) and National Truck Equip. Ass'n v. National Highway Traffic Safety Admin., 972 F.2d 669 (6th Cir.1992). In addition, to bolster their aggregate theory, the DOL points to the EAJA's legislative history and Congress' treatment of agricultural cooperative associations under the EAJA. This court finds none of these DOL arguments persuasive.

In Unification Church, three plaintiffs sought attorney's fees pursuant to the EAJA for their successful prosecution of an action. Unification Church, 762 F.2d at 1079. These three plaintiffs, individually, all satisfied the net worth and size caps imposed by the EAJA. The Church itself was also a fourth plaintiff in the matter. According to an agreement that existed amongst the plaintiffs, the Church was to pay for all attorney's fees incurred by the four parties. Id. at 1082. Under this arrangement, therefore, the Church, and not the three individual plaintiffs, would be the beneficiary of any EAJA fee award.

Congress intended to limit the award of fees to "small entities that find particularly burdensome the ever-rising costs of litigation." Id. The court thus decided to look to only the parties that would be personally liable for the payment of the fees in deciding if the EAJA qualifications were met. Id. That "real party in interest" was the Church, and since the Church did not satisfy the ceiling on profits and size imposed by the EAJA, the plaintiffs were not eligible for an award of fees. Id. at 1083. To hold otherwise would allow the Church to thwart the underlying purpose behind the statutory caps.

The facts of the case at bar are clearly distinguishable from the situation described in Unification Church. In Unification Church, the key language focuses on the "`fee arrangement among the plaintiffs.'" See American Ass'n of Retired Persons v. Equal Employment Opportunity Comm'n, 873 F.2d 402, 405 (D.C.Cir.1989). Here, no such fee arrangement exists.⁴ The decision to prosecute this case was made by the NAM alone, independent of the corporations involved in the association. While some of these corporations may benefit from the successful outcome of the NAM litigation, they played no part in the legal prosecution or decision-making processes of this case. The NAM, and not any of its members or affiliates, is the only party in interest. As such, the court must look to the NAM's net worth and employee size in order to determine its eligibility under the EAJA. Since the NAM clearly satisfies these statutory ceilings, it is eligible for an award of fees and costs under the EAJA.

To refute this conclusion, the DOL relies upon the National Truck case from the Sixth Circuit. There, a trade association brought an action challenging the safety standards of a federal agency. National Truck, 972 F.2d at 670. Association members served to benefit from the association's successful prosecution of the case. Since the trade association contained "a number of companies who [could] readily afford the costs to protect their own interests," the court decided to aggregate the net worth and employees of the members in determining their eligibility for awards under the EAJA. Id. at 673-74. When aggregated, the numbers far surpassed the limits imposed by the statute. The plaintiff was therefore ineligible for an EAJA award.

This court is not swayed by the National Truck holding. Instead, this court finds persuasive the contrary results reached in Texas Food Indus. Ass'n v. USDA, 81 F.3d 578, 582 (5th Cir.1996) and Love v. Reilly, 924 F.2d 1492, 1494 (9th Cir.1991). Both cases involved trade associations seeking awards under the EAJA. In both, the courts chose not to aggregate the net worth and employee numbers to include the corporate members of the associations. If the associations themselves qualified under the statutory ceiling, that was sufficient to bring an action for fees under the EAJA. Texas Food, 81 F.3d at 582; Love, 924 F.2d at 1494.

This court agrees with the analyses of these two circuits. The statute is clear in its description of who qualifies as a "party" capable of bringing an EAJA fee claim: "any.. association ... the net worth of which did not exceed 7,000,000 at the time the civil action was filed, and which had not more than 500 employees at the time the civil action was filed." 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(B) (1994) (emphasis added). The language is unambiguous. The statute imposes a fixed ceiling upon the net worth and employee size of associations. Nowhere does Congress instruct the courts to aggregate the net worth and employment totals of associations who function on behalf of larger corporations.⁵ Congress certainly had the opportunity to include such a requirement, but chose not to.

When interpreting clear and unambiguous statutes, courts are strongly encouraged to "presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says." Connecticut Nat'l Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253-54, 112 S.Ct. 1146, 1149-50, 117 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992). This is a "cardinal canon of statutory construction." Texas Food, 81 F.3d at 582. Section 2412(d)(2)(B) explicitly states that individual associations are required to satisfy a certain limit on net worth and size. No aggregation requirement is included. Absent ambiguity, this court gives these words their plain and obvious meaning, and therefore finds the NAM has satisfied the limits imposed on them by Congress.

The DOL argues that such an interpretation runs contrary to Congress' intent to limit EAJA award fees to small businesses who could perhaps be fearful of entering into...