Page:Baker Botts L.L.P. v. ASARCO LLC.pdf/10

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We begin with the law firms’ approach. According to the firms, fee-defense litigation is part of the “services rendered” to the estate administrator under §330(a)(1). See Brief for Petitioners 23–30. As explained above, that reading is untenable. The term “services” in this provision cannot be read to encompass adversarial fee-defense litigation. See Part II–B,. Even the dissent agrees on this point. See (opinion of ).

Indeed, reading “services” in this manner could end up compensating attorneys for the unsuccessful defense of a fee application. The firms insist that “estates do benefit from fee defenses”—and thus receive a “service” under §330(a)(1)—because “the estate has an interest in obtaining a just determination of the amount it should pay its professionals.” Brief for Petitioners 25–26 (internal quotation marks omitted). But that alleged interestand hence the supposed provision of a “service”—exists whether or not a §327(a) professional prevails in his fee dispute. We decline to adopt a reading of §330(a)(1) that would allow courts to pay professionals for arguing for fees they were found never to have been entitled to in the first place. Such a result would not only require an unnatural interpretation of the term “services rendered,” but a particularly unusual deviation from the American Rule as well, as “[m]ost fee-shifting provisions permit a court to award attorney’s fees only to a ‘prevailing party,’ ” a “ ‘substantially prevailing’ party,” or “a ‘successful’ litigant,” Hardt, 560 U. S., at 253 (footnote omitted). There is no indication that Congress departed from the American Rule in §330(a)(1) with respect to fee-defense litigation, let alone that it did so in such an unusual manner.

The Government’s theory, embraced by the dissent, fares no better. Although the United States agrees that “the defense of a fee application does not itself qualify as an inde-