Section 11 Administrative Agency Litigation

• Library: Damages 2012

Section 536.087, RSMo 2000, was enacted in 1989 and permits a “prevailing party” to recover reasonable attorney fees and expenses in administrative agency proceedings or resulting civil litigation. This statute represents an exception to the general rule that attorney fees cannot be assessed against the state or its agencies. The purpose of the statute is to encourage state agencies “to ‘carefully scrutinize agency and court proceedings and to increase accountability of the administrative agencies’” and to “relieve the financial burden a private party would face in challenging abusive or unreasonable government actions.” Seidner v. Webster, 201 S.W.3d 104, 108 (Mo. App. W.D. 2006) (quoting Hernandez v. State Bd. of Registration for Healing Arts, 936 S.W.2d 894, 901–02 (Mo. App. W.D. 1997)), abrogation on other grounds...