12 Federal Statutes Where Only the Defendant Can Recover Attorney's Fees

Most fee-shifting statutes in federal law benefit plaintiffs. Civil rights, consumer protection, environmental enforcement: Congress has repeatedly decided that certain plaintiffs need the promise of fee recovery to bring suit at all. That policy choice is so common that it is easy to assume fee-shifting always runs in one direction.

It does not. We searched the full text of the United States Code for every provision that authorizes an award of attorney's fees. That search returned roughly 250 results. We classified each one by directionality: does the statute shift fees to the plaintiff, the defendant, or both?

Twelve statutes shift fees exclusively to the defendant.

These are not mirror images of plaintiff-side fee-shifting. They serve a different purpose. Where plaintiff-side provisions encourage private enforcement, defendant-side provisions discourage abusive or meritless litigation. They protect people and entities from being forced to absorb the cost of defending claims that should not have been brought.

The twelve statutes cluster into four patterns based on what Congress was trying to protect.

Punishing bad-faith and frivolous claims

Several statutes shift fees to the defendant only when the underlying claim was frivolous, baseless, or brought in bad faith. The idea is straightforward: if you bring a meritless case, you pay for it.

The Health Care Quality Improvement Act is a clean example. It protects hospitals and peer review bodies from retaliatory lawsuits by disciplined physicians:

In any suit brought against a defendant, to the extent that a defendant has met the standards set forth under section 11112(a) of this title and the defendant substantially prevails, the court shall, at the conclusion of the action, award to a substantially prevailing party defending against any such claim the cost of the suit attributable to such claim, including a reasonable attorney's fee, if the claim, or the claimant's conduct during the litigation of the claim, was frivolous, unreasonable, without foundation, or in bad faith.

The Vessel Hull Design Protection Act follows a similar logic. A defendant who was wrongly enjoined can recover fees, but only where injunctive relief was "sought in bad faith." And 11 U.S.C. § 303, governing involuntary bankruptcy petitions, lets the debtor recover fees when the petition is dismissed, with additional damages available if the petitioner filed in bad faith.

Checking government power

A second group reimburses people who are targeted by government investigations or proceedings and not ultimately charged. The concern here is asymmetry of resources: the government can investigate at scale, and the targets bear the cost even when nothing comes of it.

28 U.S.C. § 593 addresses this directly in the independent counsel context:

Upon the request of an individual who is the subject of an investigation conducted by an independent counsel pursuant to this chapter, the division of the court may, if no indictment is brought against such individual pursuant to that investigation, award reimbursement for those reasonable attorneys' fees incurred by that individual during that investigation which would not have been incurred but for the requirements of this chapter.

34 U.S.C. § 20342, which grants federal immunity to good-faith child abuse reporters, works differently but serves a related purpose. It protects individuals acting in a quasi-public capacity from bearing the cost of defending against suits that arise from their reports.

Balancing specialized commercial regimes

The largest cluster appears in specialized commercial and regulatory contexts. These statutes share a common structure: a regulatory scheme gives certain parties a private right of action, and the fee-shifting provision exists to keep that right from being abused.

The Export Trading Company Act is illustrative. Companies that obtain a certificate of review from the Commerce Department get limited antitrust protection. If someone sues them anyway and the conduct turns out to comply with the certificate, fees shift to the defendant:

In any action brought under paragraph (1), if the court finds that the conduct does comply with the standards of section 4013(a) of this title, the court shall award to the person against whom the claim is brought the cost of suit attributable to defending against the claim (including a reasonable attorney's fee).

The others in this group follow variations on that theme. The Norris-LaGuardia Act requires anyone seeking a labor injunction to post a bond covering the defendant's fees. The Consumer Leasing Act makes lessors pay lessee fees in all residual value disputes. The Shipping Act and PACA each give prevailing defendants fee recovery in their respective regulatory enforcement contexts. And 48 U.S.C. § 1506, governing territorial land escheat, awards fees to defendants who cure the underlying deficiency before judgment.

Protecting speech against foreign judgments

One statute stands alone. The SPEECH Act blocks enforcement of foreign defamation judgments that would violate the First Amendment and shifts fees to the party who successfully resists enforcement:

The domestic court shall, absent exceptional circumstances, allow the party opposing recognition or enforcement of the judgment a reasonable attorney's fee if such party prevails in the action on a ground specified in section 4102(a), (b), or (c).

This is the only one of the twelve that is both mandatory ("shall") and tied to a constitutional policy concern rather than a regulatory scheme.

Methodology

We used an automated search of the full text of the U.S. Code, current through Public Law 119-90 (May 11, 2026), to identify every statutory provision that references attorney's fees in the context of fee-shifting. The initial search returned approximately 250 results. We then classified each provision by whether it shifts fees to the plaintiff, the defendant, or both parties. We identified 12 provisions that shift fees exclusively to the defendant. The source data is the Office of the Law Revision Counsel preliminary U.S. Code. Every statute cited in this article links to its Cornell LII page so readers can verify the text directly.