being paid per d m he doesn't have to provide receipts every time and i think that's goes to the crux of the situation mr folk art put mr hickey the retaliator the ha failed was to retaliate or put mr folk are put mr taking a situation that was intended to cause distress this was a position known as the punishment group within the agency whose put into a situation called highway therapy where he was being sent to commute into boston every day from his regular work station then sent her around us a twenty one year employee twenty three year employee beings it required to issue summonses and subpoenas on people in boston and then commuting home the travel into and out of boston out of just submit the traffic is not the same as traveling in an out of rhode island location riggs and was eating thirteen fourteen hours a day such that mr hickey on his g s salary on his g s thirteen salary wasn't able to go to the hoa to go to a hotel every night and pay for this for a nineteen months and wasn't able it would be still going on if the a j hadn't stopped it and the a j stopped it because mr folk been trying to think of the correct word for what happens when you've got a head gemini or a rubric of government are of agencies regulations that are not necessarily perfectly aligned but what happens here is mr hickey was forced work outside of his regular commuting area sixty two miles away he wasn't within the immediate commuting area such that he would be entitled to the local perdiem benefits but mr folk are the retaliat make the discretionary decision because he wasn't outside of the fifty out fifty miles for twelve hours a day because it in compass traffic but he wasn't going to exercise to discretion to allow the party of even though mr folk art made that same decision for someone who went to springfield which is ninety nine miles away and allow that person know it the dilemma in the conundrum that mr folk art was creating here for the person the court determined this was purposeful retaliation was putting him in a situation where he was not getting reimbursed for the travel because it was in a government vehicle but he was being put in a situation where mr folk art knew that he was working fifteen sixteen hours a day  travel etc and serving something to this and he was being forced to have minimal interaction with his family have minimal time off and this come down to whether or not the administrative judge understood  agency travel handbook correctly it does but i think that the the and if you if the statement about you know being away from the local community area fifty miles and what that would mean is you know as a technical matter the person is drinking had to travel twelve or thirteen miles outside of the local commuting area every day and then it would stand to reason that the board therefore or the a j made a reasonable finding that if he was only travelling twelve or thirteen miles outside the commuting area to and from boston every day and then it stands to reason everything was happening under twelve hours in terms of you count that commuting time twelve thirteen miles every day plus the nine ten hours of work that would come in under twelve hours your honor on that is correct judge then i would submit that if the issue is not clear whether you have to be outside the commuting area for twelve hours and say you know you spend three hours travelling then you work twelve hours and you spend three hours back that's compensable versus if you spend two hours travelling fifteen hours there forgive my numbers  it's whether you have to be outside of fifty miles for twelve hours and then come back or whether you can put someone in the situation where you say come back after eleven hours and then you preclude them from getting the t t y benefit or the pretty in benefits i think any evidence right i understand the numbers you know twelve miles versus fifty miles but was there any evidence about them on a time it takes to go those twelve miles in boston as opposed to the rest of them no we didn't break it up that way i will tell you the last twelve miles of any commute into a major metropolitan center as anyone who's commuted into d c now is one of the most punishing part and that is the purpose of this punishment group i would submit that the time and travel status in the agencies under any reasonable measure it's not going to be more than twelve hours for the last twelve miles certainly not necessary but the agencies premium paid guide this is instructive here and it says that th time actually traveling between points is to be considered in terms of what your travel time is and that's it appendix the appendix of three ninety nine months i mean it's three nineteen and that says that time travel status begins when you leave your official duty station and you get to the point of destination in this case that means that the sixty miles between the providence station in the boston station would be is the time to track the premium he got have anything to do with temporary duty including what you do about temporary duties it does your honor and i would point out that one of the the irony of this and i think it's a quite frankly a sloppy planned that v h s has because the duty in the ice travel handbook provides information their direction to go to where wearing it at appendix two sixty where where it sets the fifty mile the fifty fifty mile occasion right underneath the paragraph that a one and it says for further information on local travel see chapter four of chapter four is found appendix two seventy seven which says that if you're given the fifty miles and you're working more than twelve hours a day and you incur the the meals and incidental expenses and you remain a travel status for more than twelve hours between these two positions and that i think if it is not compensatory as income is intended to put mr hickey in a situation where he would incur compensatory damages this is evidence of retaliation titles and the damages under and it seems like you're lying on the t t y statutes and regulations i am for that for the pretty i'm yeah but i would submit that even if this court as a matter of law didn't find the time  trouble status in the premium paid guide instructive as to whether in the when you get out of the local area instructive and or informative as to when the time to start considering the twelve hours that clocks run if that was the case  mr folk art was doing this to put him in the no man's land between the produce then that would go to compensatory damages because you mr folk art was doing this to punish mr hickey and his testimony below us i was doing it  the board below are the board said that in order to prove the fee rate we can either submit our retainer agreement which we did and we put for proof of our customary billing records which we did we put forward right now i mean the board is allowed if it gives a good reason to reduce fees from the arrangements right yes yes you're not entitled to get exactly what you've been told it's the ceiling generally but but they're allowed to reduce  if they give a good reason yes and i assume your argument is that this is what you charge in a different case in a different situation isn't a good enough reason no sir not not only yes yes i agree with that but but isn't it further that the other case was constrained by local wrong that's what i was getting to in maryland as this court i believe should be aware has local rules that cap rates and so we don't b those rates we are artificially constrained when we are there and as we have submitted in our washington as the court in those decisions said we understand you bill it different which the difference between what you build out and the rate of the maryland rate it's about seventy dollars an hour  off the top of my head and we've built imported wanted to cut it from your builder right to that rate they would have had to come up with some other explanation in your view of why your rate was too much for this type of litigation  commensurate with it book but when the retainer rates go out we we built life your rates and then from consistent with the agreement here in the record doing between you and your korea i don't know if it's in the but it was submitted to the court below or to the to the a j who read it and said i see this is what you charge him and mr he did in fact pay those hours why isn't that just the most the best thing you can in most reasonable thing to do is that  you're arguing that if it did not if the a j did not give us laughing rights and he should at least give us the field remit because under missouri versus jenkins you're entitle to supreme court precedent you're looking title to present value rates so when you have a case that you signed up ten years ago you're not getting paid at the ten years ago rates but even even if the court didn't give us the missouri for years vs jenkins for it's a supreme court decision pick the the board precedent is that we're entitled to dictates that it's the retainer rates that should govern and just going out and finding a venue that pays us less that that's discounting the fact that their van use a payoff more if we were going to manhattan we're going to get more and to  cycle after rates but because our and of our clients are individuals they could take lea are struggling to pay our rates and so upping them when they are laughing rates go up i think we made a business decision that that's more than the individuals can in this case your honor so i want to make several points where there's fact to that question the first has to do with what the administrative judge had in front of him as to why he went looking the second has to do with the actual the maryland rate first the administrative judge pointed out that as i believe your honor did the chemist peavey's precedent says that he agreed that rate is the max possible reasonable rate anything above that is determined is presumptively unreasonable sure but if they're going to go below that they have to have a rational argument as to why to go below that which would be something along the lines of well that's too high for this area for the light but that's not what he looked at this case have been tried in maryland maybe that would have been reasonable but this was a d c firm was out of the boston regional office it was running but there was judge to determine what the reasonable rate is given the evidence in front of him a piece of which is the few cream and another piece of that is what the firm charges for cases in similar areas and most of them were familiar with with who is a v c firm or not and that's traditionally the rate given to b c for first your honor i would point to the declaration provided by the employment law group in support their their request and it indicated it never specifically said we typically practice in d c it said we typically charge the laffy fees and we customarily practice or we have hundreds of cases spread out across the d c maryland virginia i believe tennessee florida and california so maryland is one of the areas in which this firm evidently customarily practices with respect to the maryland writes i mean if this case were maryland that would be perfectly reasonable i mean what they said in their declaration that they practice in oklahoma and the a j decided to pluck out much lower oklahoma writes even though the case was tried in boston and there a national firm sh your honor the i don't know that would be the right way to put it but the burden is upon the petitioner to demonstrate that the fee requested is reasonable and in this case the evidence that the petitioner presented had to do with fees that were significantly higher than the field limit which rate which the administration judge found with that was effectively ended and he should have which this firm had represented similar clients and charge similar rates now i want to i do want to get back to the specific district of maryland local rules first of all i would point out that this is the southern division of the district of maryland which sits in greenbelt the second the local rules that describe the attorney's fees provisions with respect to the great language that sets these numbers it is permissive it's a guidance and it's very clear on that there's a very long footnote indicating that these are just suggested rates they're based on fairly is to snore mulai is what the court understands is the reasonable market rates for the area and that the judges are first and foremost bound by precedent laws regulation concerning  i don't think it's it is an arbitrary decision the primary distinction in the sense in between those two cases was timeframe and what the administrative judge noted with respect to the first case was that the maryland the fall of twenty seven teen and that later case did involve rates at a later time frame which would have been more plausible to the fee dispute rates in goes to show that there are there are certainly are reasonable range and the this range is not that wide we're talking somewhere between four hundred for ninety and the in particular the maryland case is a range that would reasonably be expected to be found for sure attorneys in the eighty's had said we find their charge for rates too high because this is not what lawyers in d c usually charge nationwide perm but they're based in d c and we all know their place in d c it's on their address you can't just go to whatever jurisdiction you want to i mean he could've went to like you said oklahoma and come up with like two hundred dollars an hour and that might have been maryland or greenville and d c well again your aren't that there isn't necessarily a nexus between the litigation and the fees charged because under this particular statute it has to do with the customary practice area of no let me pose a hypothetical supposing instead of mr hickey the same thing it been done to mr green and mr green doesn't have the moral or case where the harms for two reasons the harms that mr hickey presented were these global harms related to a whole bunch of relationships all the things that you and that pretty clearly supervisor intended to do well your honor what i was going to say is they were related to a lot of actions that were not found to be retaliatory about his safety his family lives several states apart and that very specifically caused the administrative judge to limit the apparent harm caused by the actual unlawful actions because they can clearly be tied to the harm that mr hickey was alleging the administrative judge did acknowledge that there certainly was some reputational harm some emotional and family relationship harm  very low number it was and your honor the administrative judge supported the number was similar cases in which the harm frankly was not long term not permanent  precedent in my last few seconds i will very briefly turn to the consequential damages here the discussion of whether or not mr picky was or was not entitled to produce was frankly a red herring this is about what was out of pocket expenses work what he demonstrated discrimination i will tell you she gets me on this particular day these things are not fungible that one can be traded from the other like bricks of lego nineteen months of punishment separation from their families devastated i don't like morris telling someone like mr hickey and finite means that you don't get any compensation because you slept in your car because that's because you didn't stand a hotel there's no blood no foul is preposterous well i the w p a just because the court of claims allows for contractual damages for the wage or for i'm trying remember the name of the act it's the back pay act does not mean that it's mutually exclusive that these damages would be recoverable under title seven likewise you can recover for wages if i might just finish wrap up yes or the original fee decision was in two thousand and seven november two thousand and seventeen and the second fee decision was about six months later after the agency submitted its briefs so there wasn't it wasn't in two thousand and fourteen or wasn't that time difference as represented by counsel i would finally say that mr r the a j below record yes or no guys and he also basically rejected mr hickeys and his wife's declarations as to what the undisputed damages were he didn't that a j didn't take testimony to the agency didn't depose them didn't take any discovery the only evidence before the court was the evidence and we cited it verbatim i would call the humanly disagree with the agency that where it said he didn't draw a line and that's why i cited it at length here because he said sleeping