Sebelius v. Cloer
The Court ruled that people who file vaccine-injury claims that turn out to be filed too late can still have their attorney's fees paid, as long as the claim was brought in good faith and had a reasonable basis.
The decision means lawyers who take on borderline vaccine-injury cases don't risk working for free just because a claim is later found untimely, which the Court said Congress intended in order to keep qualified attorneys willing to take these cases.
How it got here: A special master and the Federal Circuit found Cloer's petition untimely; she then sought attorney's fees, which the en banc Federal Circuit awarded, prompting the government's appeal.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Melissa Cloer received a Hepatitis-B vaccine in 1997 and later developed multiple sclerosis. She filed a claim in 2005 under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, arguing the vaccine caused or worsened her condition. A special master found her claim untimely because the clock started when her first symptoms appeared in 1997, not when she learned of a possible vaccine link in 2004.
The question before the Court
If someone files a vaccine-injury compensation claim too late, can their lawyer still be paid for the work?
The Court's answer
Yes — the Court ruled that a vaccine-injury petition found to be filed too late can still qualify for attorney's fees, as long as the petition was brought in good faith and had a reasonable basis for the claim. The Court read the word 'filed' in the fee statute according to its ordinary meaning: a petition is filed once it's delivered to and accepted by the court clerk, regardless of what happens to it later.
Nothing in the fee provision or the filing-procedure section ties eligibility for fees to meeting the 36-month deadline, and Congress knew how to write in such a requirement elsewhere in the same law but didn't do so here. So an untimely petition is still a 'petition filed' for fee purposes, even though it can't succeed on the merits.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
People injured by vaccines often can't tell right away whether their symptoms are linked to a shot, so claims sometimes come in after the deadline. This ruling assures lawyers who take on such cases in good faith that they can still be paid for their work even if a court later finds the claim was filed too late, encouraging attorneys to keep representing these claimants.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision resolving a pure question of statutory interpretation. The Federal Circuit's judgment awarding Cloer her attorney's fees stands. Going forward, special masters will need to assess good faith and reasonable basis for untimely vaccine-injury petitions when fee requests are made, but the underlying compensation rules and filing deadlines themselves are unchanged.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice Scalia
Justices Scalia and Thomas joined the Court's opinion in full except for Part II-B, which discussed how the government's reading was inconsistent with the fee provision's underlying purpose of ensuring claimants could obtain qualified legal help. Their partial join suggests they did not endorse relying on legislative purpose as an additional reason for the result, preferring to rest solely on the statute's text.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court began with the ordinary meaning of the word 'filed,' explaining that a petition is filed once it is delivered to and accepted by the proper court officer for the official record, regardless of what happens to it afterward.
- Applying that plain meaning, the Court found that Cloer's petition was 'filed' the moment it reached the clerk of the Court of Federal Claims and was forwarded to a special master, even though it was later ruled untimely.
- The Court examined the fee provision's text, which ties eligibility for fees to any unsuccessful 'petition filed under section 300aa-11,' and found no cross-reference anywhere requiring that a petition also comply with the Act's 36-month deadline to count as 'filed.'
- The Court contrasted this silence with another part of the statute that does expressly require compliance with the deadline, reasoning that Congress knows how to impose that requirement when it wants to and chose not to here.
- The Court concluded that reading the deadline into the fee provision would mean treating a petition that was actually delivered and processed as if it had never been filed at all, a result the statute's text does not support.
- Because the statutory language was unambiguous and the scheme coherent, the Court declined to apply canons favoring narrow reading of government-liability waivers or policy concerns about extra litigation, since those tools only apply when a statute's meaning is unclear.