Abstract :
In the United States, the normal rule is that each party to a lawsuit pays its own attorneys´ fees. However, some statutes, including the Copyright Act, give the trial judge the authority to make the loser pay some or all of the winner´s attorneys´ fees when the loser, in one way or another, has acted badly. The question then becomes what constitutes sufficiently bad behavior so as to justify an award of attorneys´ fees. That was the question before the court in the recent case of Asset Marketing Systems (AMS) v. Gagnon.
