It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes courts find that the EEOC has overreached so greatly in its prosecution of a claim that a win for the employer is not enough – the EEOC is required to pay the company’s legal fees too. This just happened in EEOC v. TriCore Reference Labs., No. 09-CV-956 (D. New Mexico Oct. 26, 2011), where the court found that the EEOC’s decision to continue pursuing an ADA reasonable accommodation case was “frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless” litigation under the Supreme Court’s decision in Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U.S. 412 (1978). As a result, the company is entitled to recover over $140,000 in fees expended to fight the EEOC’s case, after the point at which the EEOC should have known the case was not provable.
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