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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS
Nos. 24-CV-1122 & 24-CV-1168
EVELYN BURTON AS TRUSTEE OF THE EB TRUST, et al., APPELLANTS/CROSSAPPELLEES,
V.
CHASE POINT UNIT OWNERS ASSOCIATION, et al., APPELLEES/CROSS-APPELLANTS.
Appeals from the Superior Court
of the District of Columbia
(2020-CA-003378-B)
(Carl E. Ross, Judge)
(Argued March 25, 2026 Decided August 20, 2026)
James J. Schaller, with whom Jeremy W. Schulman was on the briefs, for appellants/cross-appellees.
Mariam W. Tadros for appellees/cross-appellants.
T. Cary Devorsetz and Michael C. Gartner filed a brief on behalf of The Washington Metropolitan Chapter of the Community Associations Institute as amicus curiae in support of appellees/cross-appellants.
Before MCLEESE, DEAHL, and HOWARD, Associate Judges.
DEAHL, Associate Judge: Evelyn Burton and her son, Michael Burton, bought
a unit in the Chase Point condominium complex in their capacities as trustees for a
family trust, “the EB Trust.” The Burtons requested permission from the condo
2
association, which we refer to as Chase Point, to install a charging station for Ms.
Burton’s Tesla. After Chase Point rejected that request, the Burtons sued. They
raised seven claims and, as to all but one of those claims, sought injunctive or
declaratory relief precluding Chase Point and its agents from blocking them from
installing their charging station. A jury rendered a verdict in the Burtons’ favor on
one of their claims and awarded them $4,000 in damages. The Burtons filed a posttrial motion requesting equitable relief in lieu of those monetary damages, to wit,
they requested a “permanent injunction and declaration that [they] may install their
system.”
The trial court denied the Burtons’ requests for equitable relief as moot
because Chase Point had, after the inception of the lawsuit, adopted a rule that allows
unit owners to install charging stations subject to certain procedures and restrictions.
The court then awarded attorneys’ fees and litigation costs to the Burtons as “the
substantially prevailing party” under D.C. Code § 42-1902.09(b), though it awarded
them less than one-seventh of their claimed fees. The court reasoned that the Burtons
prevailed on only one of their seven claims, and it further reduced the hourly rate for
that seventh of their claimed fees owing to a perceived lack of complexity in the
case.
3
The Burtons now appeal, arguing that (1) their requests for equitable relief
were not mooted out by Chase Point’s new rule governing the installation of
charging stations; and (2) the trial court erred by decreasing their fee award in
proportion to the fraction of the claims that they won. Chase Point cross appeals on
the attorneys’ fees issue. It agrees with the Burtons that the trial court misapplied the
“substantially prevailing party” standard, but argues that it, rather than the Burtons,
should have been awarded attorneys’ fees and costs under the proper understanding
of that standard because Chase Point prevailed on the bulk of the claims.
We agree with the Burtons that their requests for equitable relief are not moot.
The Burtons seek to install a particular charging station according to their own plans
and using their vendor of choice; the fact that Chase Point passed a rule permitting
the installation of charging stations on different terms, subject to various restrictions,
does not moot out that requested relief. We also agree with the parties that the trial
court misapplied the “substantially prevailing party” standard in D.C. Code
§ 42-1902.09(b). The court mistakenly conflated that standard with the “prevailing
party” standard found in other fee-shifting regimes. Additionally, simply slashing
the Burtons’ fee award in proportion to the raw number of claims they won was not
a defensible approach to calculating the fee award here. Whether the Burtons or
Chase Point are properly viewed as the substantially prevailing party may depend
on the resolution of the Burtons’ claim for equitable relief on remand, so at this point
4
we cannot say which (if either) of them is the substantially prevailing party. We
instead remand that question to the trial court after considering the Burtons’ claim
for equitable relief in the first instance.
I. Background
Charging Station Dispute
In early 2019, the Burtons began the process of buying a unit in the Chase
Point condominium complex in Northwest D.C. in their capacities as trustees for a
family trust. Ms. Burton wanted a way to charge her Tesla at the complex, so she
consulted with an electrician, who inspected the electrical room at the complex and
determined that he could install a charging station that met Ms. Burton’s needs
without affecting other circuits in the building. Ms. Burton then emailed Chase Point
to ask if she could install a charging station in one of the parking spaces associated
with the unit she wanted to buy. Chase Point’s president responded that, while he
thought having charging stations was an “excellent” idea, Chase Point needed to
study the idea further and was “not in a position to act on [her] request at this time.”
The Burtons closed on the condo unit two months later, and soon after, Ms.
Burton formally requested approval from Chase Point to install her charging station.
She attached a cost estimate and a letter from her electrician, which described how
5
he planned to install the station. Two months later, the chair of Chase Point’s
Mechanical Systems Committee responded that the committee was “seek[ing] a
solution that will serve the broader Chase Point community” but was “unable to
accommodate individual applications” for charging stations at that time. Ms. Burton
then asked to take an internal appeal, but Chase Point’s president and the committee
chair jointly responded that the decision was final and unappealable. About a year
later, and with no further updates about the broader solution Chase Point alluded to,
the Burtons filed the underlying suit.
Procedural History
The Burtons sued Chase Point, its president, and its Mechanical Systems
Committee chair in D.C. Superior Court. They raised seven claims in total: two
breach of fiduciary duty claims against the president and committee chair, and five
claims against Chase Point itself. As to all but one of their claims (a demand to
inspect Chase Point’s books and records), the Burtons’ requested relief included
either declaratory relief permitting the Burtons to install their charging station or “a
permanent injunction prohibiting” Chase Point from blocking them from doing so.
Chase Point moved to dismiss all counts, and that motion was denied. After
extensive discovery, the trial court dismissed the breach of fiduciary duty claims
against the individual defendants and granted summary judgment to Chase Point on
6
one of the remaining five claims against it, concerning the Burtons’ demand to
inspect their books and records.
Four counts survived summary judgment: (1) breach of contract; (2) breach
of Chase Point’s governing documents in violation of D.C. Code § 42-1902.09(a);
(3) intentional interference with property rights; and (4) the Burtons’ request for
declaratory relief directing that the Burtons had a right to install a charging station
in their parking space “according to the plan [they] have presented.” The case
proceeded to a jury trial on the first three claims, with the last claim reserved for the
court to decide. See generally Saunders v. Hudgens, 184 A.3d 345, 349 (D.C. 2018)
(explaining that “equitable remed[ies]” are “confided to the ‘sound and informed
discretion’ of the trial court” (quoting Indep. Mgmt. Co. v. Anderson & Summers,
LLC, 874 A.2d 862, 867-68 (D.C. 2005))). 1 The jury ruled in the Burtons’ favor on
their claim that Chase Point breached the association’s governing documents in
1
While injunctive relief is a classic form of equitable relief, declaratory relief is a bit more nuanced. The Supreme Court has found that a declaratory judgment “closely resembles” injunctive relief, CIGNA Corp. v. Amara, 563 U.S. 421, 425, 440 (2011), but at other times it has said declaratory relief is “neither legal nor equitable,” Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. v. Mayacamas Corp., 485 U.S. 271, 284 (1988). The difference is of no moment here—the trial court treated the declaratory relief request here as a form of equitable relief for the court to decide, and the parties do not dispute that treatment, which strikes us as apt in any event. We thus refer to both forms of requested relief, which are materially the same, as requests for equitable relief.
7
violation of § 42-1902.09(a), and awarded the Burtons $4,000 in damages, or about
a quarter of the monetary damages they requested as to that claim. The Burtons then
filed a post-trial motion seeking declaratory relief proclaiming they “have a right to
install” a charging station “according to the plan” they had outlined and injunctive
relief prohibiting Chase Point from blocking their installation of a charging station.
Both parties also cross-moved for attorneys’ fees and costs.
The trial court denied the Burtons’ motion for equitable relief, reasoning that
request was moot because, after the inception of the suit, Chase Point passed a rule
that permits unit owners to install charging stations if they follow certain procedures.
The relevant rule, known as Rule S, provides that “no person other than the
Association shall install, operate or maintain an electric charging station” except as
provided by the rule. A unit owner seeking to install a charging station under the rule
has to, among other things, obtain a “License issued by the Association” and
“employ a contractor approved by the Association.” In the trial court’s view, Rule S
“remove[d] any harm left to enjoin” because the Burtons were now “able to safely
install an electric vehicle charging system” in accordance with the rule. Because the
trial court concluded that the Burtons’ equitable relief request was moot, it did not
evaluate whether that relief was warranted on the merits.
8
As to attorneys’ fees and costs, the trial court ruled that the Burtons were “the
substantially prevailing party” under the relevant fee-shifting statute applicable to
suits between condo associations and unit owners. See D.C. Code § 42-1902.09(b).
The court first noted that the meaning of this statutory standard for an award of
attorneys’ fees was “unsettled” given that this court has never interpreted it. The trial
court then cited to the “prevailing party” standard applicable to other fee-shifting
regimes which, as the trial court described it, allows a plaintiff to recover fees if they
succeed on “only one out of several related claims,” see Knight v. Georgetown Univ.,
725 A.2d 472, 486-87 (D.C. 1999), and permits a defendant to recover fees “only if
the plaintiff obtains no relief whatsoever from the litigation,” id. at 487 (quoting 10
Moore’s Federal Practice § 54.171[3][c][iv], at 54-283 to -284 (3d ed. 1998)). The
court decided to “adhere[] to the established jurisprudence regarding mixed verdicts
and ‘prevailing part[ies]’” applicable to other fee-shifting regimes. And applying
that more familiar “prevailing party” standard, the court granted attorneys’ fees to
the Burtons because they prevailed on one claim. But the court awarded them less
than one-seventh of their requested fees because (1) the Burtons prevailed on only
one of their seven claims, and (2) the case’s “lack of complexity” did not justify the
requested hourly fee rate.
The Burtons now appeal, and Chase Point cross appeals.
9
II. Analysis
The Burtons challenge the trial court’s order denying their requests for
equitable relief on mootness grounds, and both the Burtons and Chase Point raise
competing challenges to the trial court’s attorneys’ fees award. We agree with the
Burtons that their requests for equitable relief are not moot. And we agree that the
trial court’s attorneys’ fees award must be vacated and remanded for reconsideration.
More specifically as to that award, we agree with Chase Point that the “substantially
prevailing party” standard is more exacting than the “prevailing party” standard the
trial court equated it to and requires a plaintiff to obtain more than a mere modicum
of relief. Beyond that, we do not opine on who “the substantially prevailing party”
is in this suit, if anybody, as that might ultimately depend on whether the Burtons
succeed in their quest for declaratory and injunctive relief—that request was at the
core of this dispute, after all. We also agree with the Burtons that it is not a sensible
approach to award the substantially prevailing party a fraction of attorneys’ fees in
proportion to the raw percentage of claims they won. Where a plaintiff brings
multiple claims seeking the same targeted relief, they could generally be said to have
substantially prevailed if they obtain that primary relief, no matter how many claims
they prevailed on.
10
A. The Burtons’ equitable relief requests are not moot
The Burtons argue that their requests for declaratory and injunctive relief were
not rendered moot by Chase Point’s Rule S, which allows unit owners to install
electric vehicle charging stations if they follow certain procedures. The Burtons
point out that they specifically requested to install a charging station on their own
terms, using their own vendor, and according to their own plans, without having to
comply with the various encumbrances and restrictions of Rule S.
We agree with the Burtons that their requests for equitable relief are not moot.
The mootness doctrine typically prevents courts from deciding cases when “the
issues presented are no longer live or when the parties lack a legally cognizable
interest in the outcome.” Geary v. Nat’l Newspaper Publishers Ass’n, 279 A.3d 371,
372 (D.C. 2022) (quoting Fraternal Ord. of Police, Metro. Lab. Comm. v. District
of Columbia, 113 A.3d 195, 198 (D.C. 2015)). But so long as “the parties have a
concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the litigation, the case is not
moot.” Chafin v. Chafin, 568 U.S. 165, 172 (2013) (quoting Knox v. Serv. Emps.
Int’l Union, Loc. 1000, 567 U.S. 298, 307-08 (2012)).
Dating back to their initial complaint, the Burtons have consistently sought a
judicial declaration that “they have a right to install” a charging station “according
to the plan [they] have presented.” And in their post-trial motion, the Burtons
11
reiterated that their request was for the court to “declare that [they] have a right to
install” a charging system “according to the plan they presented” to Chase Point in
2019. The mere existence of Rule S, which indisputably does not give the Burtons
any right to install a charging station according to their own plans, or through their
own preferred vendor, thus does not moot out their requests for equitable relief.
The trial court’s contrary ruling focused narrowly on the specific relief the
Burtons requested in Count IV of their complaint, which was their successful claim
relating to the violation of D.C. Code § 42-1902.09(a). As to that claim, which was
separate from the Burtons’ distinct claim for declaratory relief, the Burtons requested
an “injunction prohibiting [Chase Point] from blocking Plaintiffs’ attempt to install
an electric vehicle charging station.” And in the trial court’s view, Rule S completely
satisfied that request for relief, because the Burtons could now install an electric
vehicle charging station, provided they complied with Rule S. We disagree with the
trial court’s reasoning in a few respects.
First, it is not clear to us why the trial court looked only to the relief requested
in the Burtons’ complaint. By the time of post-trial motions, it was clear that the
Burtons were seeking to install their particular system according to their preferred
plans, and even if that request was in some sense untimely, or in some sense an
improper modification of their complaint, that would not raise a mootness concern.
12
Cf. Long v. United States, 312 A.3d 1247, 1256 (D.C. 2024) (“[W]hether Mr. Long
articulated his current request for relief before the trial court raises an issue of
preservation . . . not one of mootness.”). Second, even if the trial court were limited
to reading the relief specifically requested in the complaint, the Burtons’ complaint
made clear in the first claim that they were seeking declaratory relief permitting them
to install a charging station “according to the plan Plaintiffs have presented” to Chase
Point, just as they reiterated in their post-trial briefing. Third, even if on appeal we
were limited to reading the relief specifically requested in Count IV of the complaint,
the Burtons’ request to enjoin Chase Point from “blocking Plaintiffs’ attempt to
install an electric vehicle charging station” at least plausibly refers to the very
charging station they had been attempting to install. Nobody would think permitting
the Burtons to install a charging station for an e-scooter, for instance, would obviate
that request for relief; nor would one think that permitting them to install an outdated
and exceedingly slow car charging station would satisfy their demands. Each of
those would be “an electric vehicle charging station,” to be sure, but the Burtons
were quite evidently asking for more than the right to install any charging station.
At the very least, the particular relief requested in Count IV should not be narrowly
read to refer only to a generic request to install a charging station, given the Burtons’
repeated requests for more specific relief elsewhere in their complaint and later in
the litigation.
13
Because the Burtons sought to install a specific charging station according to
their particular plan, Rule S did not moot out their requested relief. Rule S places
several restrictions on a unit owner’s ability to install a charging station, limiting
them to using particular approved vendors and requiring them to secure final
approval from the Mechanical Systems Committee. If the Burtons were granted
declaratory relief permitting them to install their preferred system according to their
own plans, they could bypass any number of those requirements, and they would not
need to secure Chase Point’s approval before proceeding. That is enough to defeat
any mootness claim.
Chase Point counters that the Burtons would have to comply with Rule S
regardless, because they have never challenged the validity of Rule S, so that their
requested relief remains moot. It is wrong about that. A court of law could readily
direct that the Burtons be permitted to install their charging system according to their
preferred plans notwithstanding anything that Rule S requires, just as the Burtons
requested. It might well be that Rule S should make a court think twice before doing
that, or that Rule S imposes some legal impediment to such a court order, but that is
neither here nor there for mootness purposes: “[A]n argument questioning ‘the legal
availability of a certain kind of relief,’ couched as a claim of mootness, ‘confuses
mootness with the merits.’” Long, 312 A.3d at 1256 (quoting Chafin, 568 U.S. at
174).
14
In holding that the Burtons’ requested relief is not moot, however, we do not
endorse their view that they were in fact entitled to the precise injunctive and
declaratory relief they requested simply because the jury ruled in their favor on one
claim. The jury found that Chase Point had “violated Section 6.2(c) and Section
6.2(d) of the Chase Point Declaration by refusing to allow plaintiffs to install an
electric vehicle charging system.” 2 But that verdict did not entitle the Burtons to any
particular equitable remedy, and it did not dictate what if any equitable relief should
be granted. The Burtons are thus incorrect to assert that the trial court “failed to
follow the jury’s factual findings” by denying their requests for equitable relief.
Given the wide latitude trial courts have to fashion equitable remedies, it may be
within the court’s discretion to conclude that the Burtons’ $4,000 damages award
was an adequate legal remedy for the harm they experienced. See Kakaes v. George
Washington Univ., 790 A.2d 581, 583 (D.C. 2002) (“[E]quitable relief will not be
granted where the plaintiff has a complete and adequate remedy at law.”). Condo
unit owners necessarily “give up a certain degree of freedom of choice” that they
2
Section 6.2(c), titled “Utilities,” provides that “reasonable easements shall exist through the Units and the Limited Common Elements” to provide unit owners with “access to utility systems . . . [that] cannot be reasonably obtained through the General Common Elements.” It also states that such access, if requested, “shall not be unreasonably denied or delayed” by the association. Section 6.2(d), titled “Ingress and Egress — Common Elements,” provides that “[e]ach Unit Owner shall have an easement in common” with other owners “for ingress and egress through, and use and enjoyment of, all General Common Elements.”
15
might otherwise enjoy on their property, Burgess v. Pelkey, 738 A.2d 783, 788 (D.C.
1999) (quoting Worthinglen Condo. Unit Owners’ Ass’n v. Brown, 566 N.E.2d 1275,
1277 (Ohio Ct. App. 1989)), and perhaps Rule S provides a reasonable path for
Chase Point residents to install electric vehicle charging stations, so that the trial
court might rightly deny the requested equitable relief on the merits. But those are
questions for the trial court in the first instance, and it did not reach them because it
erroneously ruled that the Burtons’ equitable relief requests were moot.
Finally, Chase Point argues that the trial court did effectively rule on the
merits of the Burtons’ equitable relief requests when it suggested that the Burtons’
installation proposal was unsafe, and it urges us to affirm the trial court’s denial of
equitable relief on that merits-based ground. More specifically, the trial court made
a fleeting comment that the Burtons’ plan “could compromise a firewall connected
to the building’s electrical system if widely adopted” by other residents. We do not
read that as a ruling on the merits for two reasons. First, it came in the middle of a
paragraph that ended as follows: “Because Plaintiffs have been able to safely install
an electric vehicle charging system since 2022, in accordance with Rule S, their
request for equitable relief is moot.” Given this context, the trial court seems to have
been discussing safety concerns in the context of explaining why Chase Point passed
Rule S, as opposed to why the court would deny the Burtons relief on the merits.
Second, simply stating the potential negative ramifications of an equitable remedy—
16
if widely granted to other residents—does not amount to a full evaluation of whether
that remedy is warranted for these specific litigants. Cf. Caesar v. Westchester Corp.,
280 A.3d 176, 192 (D.C. 2022) (listing the four criteria a plaintiff must satisfy to
receive injunctive relief). The trial court never evaluated the merits of the Burtons’
claim for injunctive or declaratory relief, so we remand for the trial court to consider
that requested relief in the first instance.
B. The trial court misapplied the substantially prevailing party standard.
We now consider the competing challenges to the trial court’s award of
attorneys’ fees. We first consider the parties’ competing views about what makes a
litigant “the substantially prevailing party” under D.C. Code § 42-1902.09(b), and
we review that question de novo. See Jacobson v. Clack, 309 A.3d 571, 577 (D.C.
2024) (“The proper interpretation” of a fee-shifting provision “raises questions of
law that we review de novo.”).
1. “The substantially prevailing party” standard in § 42-1902.09(b)
The Burtons argue that the trial court correctly imported the interpretation of
the “prevailing party” standard under other fee-shifting regimes when interpreting
what makes one the substantially prevailing party under D.C. Code § 42-1902.09(b).
If anything, the Burtons argue that the “substantially prevailing party” standard is
17
less rigorous than the more typical “prevailing party” standard, so the fact that they
were prevailing parties because they procured some modicum of relief necessarily
means they were likewise substantially prevailing parties. By contrast, Chase Point
argues that the court misinterpreted the statutory phrase “the substantially prevailing
party” by treating it as having the same meaning as the “prevailing party” standard
applicable in other contexts. See, e.g., Knight, 725 A.2d at 486-87. In its view, the
“substantially prevailing party” standard is more onerous for plaintiffs than the more
familiar “prevailing party” standard and requires an assessment of which party won
“a majority of the claims.” We agree with Chase Point that the court misinterpreted
the “substantially prevailing party” standard as identical to the “prevailing party”
standard, though unlike Chase Point, we attach little significance to which party won
a majority of the claims.
To provide some groundwork, the baseline “American rule” is that parties are
responsible for paying their own attorneys’ fees, regardless of who succeeds in the
litigation. See Yeh v. Hnath, 294 A.3d 1081, 1087 (D.C. 2023). Various statutes and
court rules shift that baseline rule, with the most common shift coming through
statutes that permit a “prevailing party” to recover their attorneys’ fees from the
losing party. Under that “prevailing party” standard, “the term ‘prevailing party’ is”
most typically “understood to mean a party ‘who has been awarded some relief by
18
the court.’” 3 Settlemire v. D.C. Off. of Emp. Appeals, 898 A.2d 902, 907 (D.C. 2006)
(quoting Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Hum.
Res., 532 U.S. 598, 603 (2001)); Prevailing Party, Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed.
2024) (defining the term as a “party in whose favor a judgment is rendered,
regardless of the amount of damages awarded”). A plaintiff can be a prevailing party
if they succeed “on only one out of several related claims,” while a defendant
typically prevails “only if the plaintiff obtains no relief whatsoever.” Knight, 725
A.2d at 487 (quoting Moore’s, § 54.171[3][c][iv]). That is an asymmetric standard—
the plaintiff needs only to cross a low threshold, while the defendant must win on
every claim to prevail. See Barnes Found., 242 F.3d at 157-58 (noting that the
3
There is no single, universal standard for when either a plaintiff or a defendant is the prevailing party because each fee-shifting statute and rule that uses that phrase arises in its own distinct context. Cf. Frankel v. D.C. Off. for Plan. & Econ. Dev., 110 A.3d 553, 557 (D.C. 2015) (noting, for instance, that Settlemire “does not control the interpretation” of the D.C. Freedom of Information Act’s feeshifting provision). The prevailing party standard under the Civil Rights Act, for instance, is even more plaintiff-friendly than Settlemire—under Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U.S. 412 (1978), a plaintiff “should ordinarily recover an attorney’s fee unless special circumstances would render such an award unjust,” while the defendant is only entitled to fees if “the plaintiff’s action was frivolous, unreasonable or without foundation.” Barnes Found. v. Twp. of Lower Merion, 242 F.3d 151, 158 (3d Cir. 2001) (quoting Christiansburg, 434 U.S. at 416-17, 421). But the D.C. Circuit has stated that fee-shifting statutes “should be treated the same . . . unless there is some good reason for doing otherwise,” Oil, Chem. & Atomic Workers Int’l Union, AFL-CIO v. Dep’t of Energy, 288 F.3d 452, 455 (D.C. Cir. 2002), and Knight and Settlemire set forth the typical “prevailing party” standard for fee-shifting provisions in the District.
19
prevailing party standard is “more stringent” for defendants than plaintiffs under 42
U.S.C. § 1988).
So the question becomes what to make of the D.C. Council’s seemingly
deliberate choice to add the modifier “substantially” to “prevailing party” in
§ 42-1902.09(b). We start from a presumption, contrary to the trial court’s reasoning,
that the Council meant to add something to the “prevailing party” standard by tacking
on that modifier. See School St. Assocs. Ltd. P’ship v. District of Columbia, 764 A.2d
798, 807 (D.C. 2001) (“Common rules of statutory construction require us to avoid
conclusions that effectively read language out of a statute whenever a reasonable
interpretation is available that can give meaning to each word in the statute.”); cf.
United States v. Brown, 422 A.2d 1281, 1284 (D.C. 1980) (noting that the legislature
“is presumed to have been aware of existing statutes” and that “a change in
legislative language gives rise to the presumption that a change was intended in
legislative result”). But the parties pose opposite theories about what work the word
“substantially” is doing in the statute.
In the Burtons’ view, the word “substantially” acts as a diminishing modifier
that means, “for the most part,” as in somebody who is less than a prevailing party
may yet be a substantially prevailing party. They cite a definition in Black’s Law
Dictionary that roughly supports that reading: “Containing the essence of a thing;
20
conveying the right idea even if not the exact details.” Substantial, Black’s Law
Dictionary (12th ed. 2024). Chase Point counters with other definitions from Black’s
Law that suggest the word substantial functions in exactly the opposite way, as an
intensifying modifier: (1) “Important, essential, and material; of real worth and
importance”; and (2) “Considerable in extent, amount, or value; large in volume or
number.” Id. Under that view, only a subset of “prevailing party” plaintiffs—those
who have won the bulk of their dispute, measured in any number of ways—are
likewise the “substantially prevailing party.”
Contrary to both parties’ arguments, an appeal to plain meaning cannot settle
their debate. The word “substantially” can quite naturally work as either a
diminishing modifier or an intensifying modifier. For instance, if two things are
“substantially identical,” it stands to reason that they are less than perfectly identical
things. And if one has “substantially complied” with the law, that suggests
something less than perfect compliance. See 3 Sutherland Statutory Construction
§ 57.26 (8th ed. Nov. 2025 update) (discussing the view that “substantial
compliance” means something less than perfect compliance). In those contexts, the
word “substantially” acts as a diminishing modifier. Conversely, if your flight is
“substantially delayed,” that means it was more than slightly delayed, or delayed by
a considerable amount of time; and if your rent has “substantially increased,” that
means it went up by a considerable amount rather than a trivial one. In those
21
contexts, “substantially” acts as an intensifier. Cf., e.g., Toyota Motor Mfg., Ky., Inc.
v. Williams, 534 U.S. 184, 198 (2002) (defining “substantially limited” under the
Americans with Disabilities Act as “an impairment that prevents or severely
restricts” daily activities).
What ultimately persuades us that the “substantially prevailing party”
standard raises the bar for plaintiffs is that the “prevailing party” standard poses a
rather low bar for them, and an exceedingly high bar for defendants: it requires
plaintiffs to procure only a modicum of relief, and defendants to achieve total victory
in defeating all claims. See Knight, 725 A.2d at 486-87. With that as the baseline, it
is hard to see how the word “substantially” could do anything but raise the bar to a
plaintiff’s recovery and conversely lower it for defendants. That is, it is hard to see
how a plaintiff who has secured no modicum of relief, and is thus not a prevailing
party, could be fairly described as substantially prevailing in any sense. And it is
conversely hard to see how a defendant who has won on every claim, and thus
prevailed under the usual standard, has not likewise substantially prevailed.
Our conclusion also draws support from the distinctive structure, purpose, and
legislative history of this fee-shifting provision. The provision lacks the strong
plaintiff-favoring rationale that animates the more generous “prevailing party”
standard found in statutes like the Civil Rights Act. See 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). Fee
22
provisions that place a heavy thumb on the scale for plaintiffs often do so because
they enlist private litigants to vindicate important public rights, such that a prevailing
plaintiff sues “not for himself alone but also as a ‘private attorney general,’
vindicating a policy that [the legislature] considered of the highest priority.”
Newman v. Piggie Park Enters., Inc., 390 U.S. 400, 402 (1968) (per curiam) (citation
omitted); see also Christiansburg, 434 U.S. at 416‑17 (describing the asymmetric,
plaintiff-favoring standard that flows from that enforcement rationale). The
Condominium Act, by contrast, was not similarly designed to encourage private suits
to vindicate broader public interests, but instead to simply govern private disputes
between condominium associations and their unit owners. As the legislative history
makes clear, the fee-shifting provision in particular was at least partly motivated by
a desire to “discourage the filing of meritless lawsuits.” Condominium Amendment
Act of 2014, Report on Bill No. 20-139 before the Committee on Economic
Development, Council of the District of Columbia, at 4 (Dec. 11, 2013) (Committee
Report) (emphasis added). 4 That structure, purpose, and history suggests that this
4
The parties highlight various aspects of the legislative history that they contend support their respective views. We find the legislative history to be largely unilluminating, as there was no direct discussion about why the Council adopted the “substantially prevailing party” standard as opposed to the more typical “prevailing party” standard. But one other purpose for the fee-shifting provision, highlighted in the Committee Report, was to “make parties whole when they are forced to bring
23
provision was not singularly designed to encourage plaintiffs to bring suits, but
instead to shift fees to whichever party is more deserving, all things considered.
Other courts are generally in accord with this view, holding that the
“substantially prevailing party” standard in other statutes does not put quite so heavy
a thumb on the scale in favor of plaintiffs, but instead asks courts to assess which
party “won more than it lost.” Tax Track Sys. Corp. v. New Inv. World, Inc., 478
F.3d 783, 789-90 (7th Cir. 2007); see also Plank v. Cherneski, 231 A.3d 436, 479
(Md. 2020); Route Triple Seven Ltd. P’ship v. Total Hockey, Inc., 127 F. Supp. 3d
607, 616-17 (E.D. Va. 2015); (Al) Burton v. Jeremiah Beach Parker Restoration &
Constr. Mgmt. Corp., 6 A.3d 38, 41-42 (Vt. 2010).
In Plank, for example, what is now the Maryland Supreme Court upheld a fee
award finding that two defendants were the “substantially prevailing parties” based
on the “nature of the counts and the remedies sought.” 231 A.3d at 479. In that case,
the trial court awarded fees to the defendants even though the plaintiffs won on three
legitimate claims in court.” Committee Report, supra, at 4. That seems to favor all plaintiffs who have succeeded in any respect, i.e., who had “legitimate claims,” at least if they were “forced to bring” them and could not secure relief outside of litigation. On balance, we think the cross-cutting purposes that the Council highlighted for this fee-shifting provision in the Committee Report best support our view that the “substantially prevailing party” standard requires more of plaintiffs than satisfying the more typical “prevailing party” standard, though the bar is perhaps not that much higher, as we explain in the next subsection.
24
of their claims because those claims were “minor and insignificant” compared to the
six claims defendants won and plaintiffs did not obtain their “primary objective”—
dissolution or a receivership. Id. Similarly, in Route Triple Seven v. Total Hockey, a
federal district court found that the defendant was the substantially prevailing party
because it prevailed on “the bulk of the matters in dispute” and the plaintiff won only
“one relatively small issue.” 127 F. Supp. 3d at 616. As the court noted, a party “need
not succeed on every claim raised” to substantially prevail; instead, it “need only
achieve significant success on a majority of issues in dispute.” Id.
The Vermont Supreme Court has similarly instructed trial courts applying the
substantially prevailing party standard to take a “flexible and reasoned approach
focused on determining which side achieved a comparative victory on the issues
actually litigated or the greater award proportionally to what was actually sought.”
(Al) Burton, 6 A.3d at 41. In (Al) Burton, the court upheld a fee award for the
defendant because the plaintiff recovered only a “tiny fraction of what he sought”—
$566 as opposed to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Id. at 42. So even though the
plaintiff was the “net victor” based on the damages award, he did not substantially
prevail because the claims the defendant won were more central to the case and the
plaintiff’s award was for much less money than what he had sought. See id.; see also
Birchwood Land Co. v. Ormond Bushey & Sons, Inc., 82 A.3d 539, 552 (Vt. 2013)
(noting that (Al) “Burton stressed the fact-centered and flexible nature of the
25
decision” and affirming that one party’s status as “net victor” does not “compel a
conclusion that it substantially prevailed under the statute”). These cases reinforce
that the “substantially prevailing party” standard requires a more holistic inquiry to
evaluate which party achieved a comparative victory on the main issue or issues in
the case.
We find some further support for that interpretation in our own Anti-SLAPP
Act jurisprudence. The District’s Anti-SLAPP Act permits an attorneys’ fees award
to a party who “prevails, in whole or in part,” on a special motion to dismiss under
the Anti-SLAPP Act. D.C. Code § 16-5504(a). We have observed that an early draft
of that statute permitted attorneys’ fees only to those who had “substantially
prevailed,” and by lowering that bar to permit fee awards to those who had merely
prevailed “in whole or in part,” we reasoned that the Council was “broadening the
availability of attorneys’ fees.” Jacobson, 309 A.3d at 580-81. That reasoning goes
both ways: by adding “substantially” to the prevailing party standard, the Council
seems to have raised the bar for plaintiffs to procure a fee award above and beyond
what the more typical “prevailing party” standard requires.
While we do not attempt to provide an exhaustive list of factors relevant to
who the substantially prevailing party is, we believe they include, at a minimum:
(1) whether the claims each party won and lost were central or peripheral to the
26
dispute; (2) the extent to which those claims related to the same underlying issue or
issues; (3) the value of the relief obtained relative to what each party had sought; and
(4) whether the plaintiff achieved more success than they could have reasonably
expected without resorting to litigation. On this last point, in our view, even a modest
legal victory could make one a substantially prevailing party provided that similar
relief could not have been readily achieved without resorting to litigation.
2. “The substantially prevailing party” in this case
With that said, we do not decide who was “the substantially prevailing party”
in this case. In our view, if the only relief the Burtons achieve in this protracted
litigation is the $4,000 the jury awarded them, it is at least a defensible view that
they have not substantially prevailed given that their core request seems to have been
for equitable relief allowing them to install their specific charging station. But even
that is far from clear: that $4,000 monetary award compensated the Burtons for a
legal wrong, so perhaps the Burtons will “substantially prevail” even if that is the
only relief they ultimately procure. While far from an astronomical sum, $4,000 goes
beyond nominal damages, and one could rightly view Chase Point as having
substantially lost the case given that they were found liable on a non-trivial claim.
That is all to say we do not try to flesh out the “substantially prevailing party”
standard beyond ruling that plaintiffs will not satisfy it by securing any modicum of
27
relief, and that the four considerations listed above are relevant to determining which
party substantially prevailed. We make only two additional points to help guide the
proceedings on remand.
First, whether the Burtons ultimately succeed in their quest for equitable relief
should bear considerably on who the “substantially prevailing party” is in this case.
From the start, the Burtons’ chief objective was to install their preferred charging
station, and if they achieve that goal it would be very difficult to see how they could
be considered anything other than the substantially prevailing parties. Chase Point
counters that, even if the Burtons procure that relief, the Burtons still would have
lost most of the seven claims in their complaint, so that Chase Point should be
viewed as the substantially prevailing party in any event. But that is not a sensible
approach to the question at hand. Plaintiffs often bring multiple causes of action
related to the same issue, and in pursuit of the same relief, so the fact that a defendant
wins a bare majority of the claims says little about who achieved a comparative
victory in the case.
Second, if the Burtons are ultimately the substantially prevailing parties, the
trial court’s previous approach of awarding them fees in proportion to the raw
number of claims they won is not a defensible one. As we have just explained,
plaintiffs often bring a host of claims in the hopes that any one of them will succeed
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and lead to the relief they seek. This case is a good example of that, where the
Burtons sought equitable relief attendant to six of their seven claims. So even if, in
raw numbers, they lose the vast bulk of their claims, they would seem to have
achieved a nearly full vindication of their rights if they are granted the equitable
relief they seek. The mere fact that they did so after pitching multiple alternative
theories for granting them that relief seems to us a rough irrelevancy in calculating
a fee award. See Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 435 & n.11 (1983) (rejecting a
“mathematical approach” to awards and noting that the trial court should “focus on
the significance of the overall relief obtained by the plaintiff in relation to the hours
reasonably expended on the litigation”); Frankel, 110 A.3d at 560 (“[A] court should
compensate the plaintiff for the time his attorney reasonably spent in achieving the
favorable outcome, even if ‘the plaintiff failed to prevail on every contention.’”
(quoting Fox v. Vice, 563 U.S. 826, 834 (2011))).
On remand, the trial court will have some leeway to assess which party
substantially prevailed in this case, considering the factors we have described and
anything else it deems relevant. 5 The court could perhaps also conclude that neither
5
One other potentially relevant consideration is whether the Burtons “achieve[d their] desired result because the lawsuit brought about a voluntary change in the defendant’s conduct”—i.e., Chase Point’s enactment of Rule S. See Frankel, 110 A.3d at 556-58 (discussing the “catalyst theory” and how it applies to the D.C.
29
party substantially prevailed. See Fletcher Hill, Inc. v. Crosbie, 872 A.2d 292, 297
(Vt. 2005) (noting that the phrase “the substantially prevailing party” limits a fee
award to one party but “does not imply that there must be a substantially prevailing
party in every case”). All we hold today is that the trial court erred by construing the
“substantially prevailing party” standard in D.C. Code § 42-1902.09(b) as
synonymous with the “prevailing party” standard, for the reasons explained above,
and by taking a raw number of claims approach to calculating any fee award.
III. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we vacate the trial court’s order and remand for
further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Freedom of Information Act). The parties debate whether the Burtons’ lawsuit here in some way acted as a catalyst for Chase Point enacting Rule S, but we express no view about that factual matter. We also express no view on whether some version of the “catalyst theory” as described in Frankel applies to the fee-shifting provision at issue here.