Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the Atlantic and Maryland Reporters. Users are requested to notify the Clerk of the Court of any formal errors so that corrections may be made before the bound volumes go to press.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS Nos. 24-CV-1122 & 24-CV-1168
EVELYN BURTON AS TRUSTEE OF THE EB TRUST, et al., APPELLANTS/CROSS-
APPELLEES,
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 post- trial 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 fee- shifting 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
28
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.