EAJA refers to the Equal Access to Justice Act, a law in the US that allows the awarding of legal costs and fees to prevailing parties of cases or lawsuits that are filed against the US federal government. As long as the cases are considered justified, the prevailing parties involved may ask for the US government to pay for covered legal fees which may include lawyer’s fees, and the costs for bringing expert witnesses. In some cases, prevailing parties may also ask the US government to refund expenses incurred for the various tests or activities that were required in completing the involved lawsuit.

For people or groups of people who sue the US government for something and then win the case, they should file EAJA within 30 days from the date the final judgment was given or when the case was actually won. This one-month window period is considered enough for prevailing parties to do the necessary paper work and prepare the requirement needed for an EAJA claim. For non-standard lawsuits, petitions may be filed to lengthen the amount of time before an EAJA case can be filed.

A common example of an EAJA-related case is the case among US military veterans who hire their own lawyers to sue the US government for more or substantial benefits as retired members of the organization. Many veterans for example have pushed for better benefit packages because of inflation in and in the increasing prices of basic commodities. With this ongoing battle against the US government, these veterans have also incurred huge legal expenses over several years or even decades of their campaign. For some of these cases, these veterans were successful in their cases and may actually file an EAJA claim to cover various fees like those that they paid for their lawyers. The veterans in this case will then have to justify that their EAJA claim regarding the legal costs are reasonable enough to be granted payment.