rule that a party pays its own attorneys fees, providing instead that a “prevailing party may recover its attorneys fees.” Recently, however, in Buckhannon Bd. and Home Care v. W. Va. Dept. of Health and Human Serv., 532 U.S. 598, 605, 121 S.Ct. 1835, 149 L.Ed.2d 855 (2001), the Supreme Court held that for purposes of such statutes, a party is not a “prevailing party” where it has failed to secure a judgment on the merits or a court-ordered consent decree. To be considered a prevailing party, there must be a “judicially sanctioned change in the legal relationship of the parties.” Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 605, 121 S.Ct. 1835. See also Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employers v. United States Immigration and Naturalization Serv., 202 F.Supp.2d 265, 280 (S.D.N.Y.2002) (<HOLDING>) (emphasis added). In the instant case, there
holding that the standard for permanent injunction is the same as that for preliminary injunction with the one exception being that the plaintiff must show actual success on the merits rather than likelihood of success holding that regardless of other factors as to harms a movants likelihood of success must carry at least a fair chance of success on the merits in order to warrant interim relief internal quotation omitted holding that a plaintiff who wins any measure of damages is a prevailing party for the purposes of feeshifting statutes holding that it need not reach a decision on whether a party could prevail under buckhannon in the absence of a consent decree or a final judgment on the merits holding that in light of buckhannon the notion of a litigant prevailing for the purposes of the feeshifting statutes must be understood to demand some success on the merits incorporated in a judgment or other judicial decree