Case Citator › Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Resources

Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Resources

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Superseded by statute
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
532 U.S. 598
Decided
Confirmed treatments
2
Flagged citations read
203 of 203
Citing cases (total)
3,006
Treatment dates
2001–2010
Superseded by statute
A reviewed court treats this case as superseded by later legislation. Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources was superseded by statute for Freedom of Information Act fee claims and limited for a differently worded Endangered Species Act fee provision; two federal-law treatments are listed below. Congress restored the catalyst theory for FOIA claims after courts had applied Buckhannon to them.
More on how this was screened

California's separate choice for its own fee statute is noted below. All 203 flagged citations have been read.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

3,006 later cases cite Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Resources; 203 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Resources?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Superseded by Statute

  • The D.C. Circuit recognized that Congress restored the catalyst theory for Freedom of Information Act fee claims after Buckhannon had displaced that theory in FOIA cases.

    Davis v. United States Department of Justice · D.C. Circuit · filed

    But the Supreme Court rejected the catalyst theory in Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Department of Health & Human Resources, 532 U.S. 598 (2001). ... Disapproving of the effect these cases had on the disclosure policies of administrative agencies, Congress enacted the OPEN Government Act of 2007 to establish that the catalyst theory applied in FOIA cases.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Limited

  • The court limited Buckhannon's rejection of the catalyst theory to fee statutes using “prevailing party” language and declined to extend it to the Endangered Species Act's “whenever appropriate” fee provision.

    Southwest Center for Biological Diversity v. Carroll · C.D. Cal. · filed

    Because the "whenever...appropriate" language of the ESA is distinguishable on its face from the "prevailing party" language of the civil rights statutes, this Court is reluctant to extend the Buckhannon holding to the fee provisions of the ESA. ... For these reasons we hold that in the absence of any Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit precedent overruling the "catalyst theory" in the context of the ESA or other similar environmental statutes, it is appropriate for this Court to exercise its discretion under § 1540(g)(4) and determine whether an attorney's fee award is appropriate in this case.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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