Opinion of the Court
fees for fee-defense litigation absent express statutory authorization. Requiring bankruptcy attorneys to pay for the defense of their fees thus will not result in any disparity between bankruptcy and nonbankruptcy lawyers.[1]
The United States nonetheless contends that uncompensated fee litigation in bankruptcy will be particularly costly because multiple parties in interest may object to fee applications, whereas nonbankruptcy fee litigation typically involves just a lawyer and his client. But this argument rests on unsupported predictions of how the statutory scheme will operate in practice, and the Government’s conduct in this case reveals the perils associated with relying on such prognostications to interpret statutes: The United States took the opposite view below, asserting that “requiring a professional to bear the normal litigation costs of litigating a contested request for payment … dilutes a bankruptcy fee award no more than any litigation over professional fees.” Reply Brief for Appellant United States Trustee in No. 11–290 (SD Tex.), p. 15. The speed with which the Government has changed its tune offers a good argument against substituting policy-oriented predictions for statutory text.
More importantly, we would lack the authority to rewrite the statute even if we believed that uncompensated fee litigation would fall particularly hard on the bankruptcy bar. “Our unwillingness to soften the import of Congress’ chosen words even if we believe the words lead to a harsh outcome is longstanding,” and that is no less true in bankruptcy than it is elsewhere. Lamie v. United States Trustee, 540 U. S. 526, 538 (2004). Whether or not the Government’s theory is desirable as a matter of policy, Congress has not granted us
- ↑ To the extent the United States harbors any concern about the possibility of frivolous objections to fee applications, we note that “Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 9011—bankruptcy’s analogue to Civil Rule 11—authorizes the court to impose sanctions for bad-faith litigation conduct, which may include ‘an order directing payment … of some or all of the reasonable attorneys’ fees and other expenses incurred as a direct result of the violation.’ ” Law v. Siegel, 571 U. S. 415, 427 (2014).
