00-2078 Crabill v. Trans Union, L.L.C.

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“[T]he pertinent judicial landscape has changed with the Supreme Court’s decision this past term in Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dept. of Health & Human Resources, 121 S. Ct. 1835 (2001). Rejecting the ‘catalyst’ theory under which successful plaintiffs receive attorneys’ fees for causing defendants to change their behavior even if no judgment was entered, the Court held that attorneys’ fees may be awarded only if the plaintiff was ‘awarded some relief by the court.’ Id. at 1839. ‘[A] litigant who left the court emptyhanded’ gets no fees. Id. at 1844 (concurring opinion). … That is Jerry Crabill’s situation. It is true that Buckhannon did not involve a consumer-protection statute, but rather the civil rights attorneys’ fee statute, 42 U.S.C. sec. 1988. But the Court emphasized the similarity of most federal fee-shifting statutes and even equated ‘prevailing’ with ‘successful’ party, 121 S. Ct. at 1839 and nn. 4-5, the former being the term in the civil rights attorneys’ fee statute and the latter the term in the Fair Credit Reporting Act. One of the consumer-protection cases that we cited earlier says that ‘the goal of the fee provision here [i.e., in the Truth in Lending Act] mirrors that of section 1988,’ Jesus v. Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, supra, 918 F.2d at 234, and the other that ‘the policies informing … [section 1988] apply with equal force to the FCRA,’ Bryant v. TRW, Inc., supra, 689 F.2d at 80 – our statute. We cannot find anything in the text, structure, or legislative history of the Act to suggest that its attorneys’ fee provision has a different meaning from the provision at issue in Buckhannon. … Of course, this is not a catalyst case, like Buckhannon. The significance of the Buckhannon decision for our case lies rather in its insistence that a plaintiff must obtain formal judicial relief, and not merely ‘success,’ in order to be deemed a prevailing or successful party under any attorneys’ fee provision comparable to the civil rights attorneys’ fee statute. Buckhannon read with Bryant thus makes clear that Crabill is entitled to no relief at all, not even attorneys’ fees. The implications for other consumer-protection statutes remain for consideration in future cases.”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Mihm, J., Posner, J.