Kiseleva v. Greenspan

Background

On May 19, 2025, after discovery, the Court granted Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. On September 25, 2025, the Court denied Defendants’ motion for attorneys’ fees. Defendants then timely moved for reconsideration of the fee decision, and Plaintiff opposed that motion.

The Court also noted that Plaintiff said she was proceeding without a lawyer, but Anuradha Lazarre remained her counsel of record. The Court stated that Lazarre had failed to respond to two orders requiring an explanation and appeared to have abandoned Plaintiff.

Defendants’ Argument

The defendants relied chiefly on Fox v. Vice, in which the Supreme Court explained that a defendant may receive fees even when a lawsuit is not entirely frivolous. The defendants argued that Fox required the Court to separately evaluate each issue and claim they contended was frivolous because the Court had not previously performed that analysis.

Court’s Analysis

The Court explained that, in an action enforcing Section 1981, it has broad discretion to decide whether to award a prevailing party reasonable attorneys’ fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). The Court also emphasized that awarding fees to prevailing defendants in civil-rights cases can discourage people from bringing meritorious claims.

The Court stated that Kiseleva had adequately pleaded her employment-discrimination claims. Her failure to produce enough evidence to defeat summary judgment did not, by itself, show that the claims were frivolous or lacked a foundation. The Court said that the limited summary-judgment record made it impossible to determine whether the claims were truly frivolous or whether the weak presentation of the claims resulted from inadequate or distracted lawyering. The Court remained unwilling to punish Kiseleva for her attorney’s shortcomings.

The Court rejected the defendants’ argument that Fox required a detailed claim-by-claim parsing process. Although Fox held that a defendant need not show every claim was frivolous to qualify for fees, the Court retained discretion to decide first whether any claim was actually frivolous. Based on the limited record, the Court had concluded that none was.

The Court further stated that Kiseleva’s failure to win the case did not itself show that the lawsuit was frivolous. It found no adequate evidence that some claims, but not others, were wholly unfounded, and nothing in the reconsideration motion showed that the Court had overlooked evidence indicating that the claims were entirely frivolous. The motion also did not show that the prior fee decision was clearly erroneous or that Kiseleva had acted in bad faith.

Disposition

The Court denied Defendants’ motion for reconsideration. It declined to revisit the decision denying Defendants’ request for attorneys’ fees and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the open motion at Docket 115.