awarded by the trial court in essence we had a lawsuit that was commenced saying that nassau county was tardy in processing it public assistance there was no argument with that that case was settled within a year there after march two thousand and eleven reports we've been generated been sent to our adversaries who were monitoring to make sure that we complied with the rules and regs and then hurricane irene twelve our reports stop we don't give a report for october november december and i don't believe we give january but we are in communication with them explaining the leak council on this is opening emergency shelters three emergency shelters as demonstrated by the affirmation that before you in addition is a volunteer fireman he's going out thirty times a night during this extreme emergency the county i lived in plain view i had no power i was showering in my country club i ran was running out of gas i had to stop doing that but it was a tough time and they were attempting to comply actually in february two thousand and fifteen they did give all the back reports those four months that's the same day they filed the contempt for city now the contempt receding was pretty much immediately dismissed by judge through a city and it was given to grace moran a referee to percent compliance or ninety three percent the county proposed i think it was ultimately settled at ninety six percent but if you're honest would look a record a fifty seven of the joint appendix there or the attorneys hours be hours for this motion and the fence of a cross motion and these nine meetings with grace moran which took about two to three hours each is nine hundred eighty eight hours you know it reminded me of the old definition of pornography from the supreme court you may not be able to describe it you might not be able to explain what it is but you know it when you see it for a minute and seventy thousand dollars spent for what is questionably no benefit to the class  we were moving in that direction we were ready accomplishing what was expected of us the contempt was totally unnecessary a little more patience they would have had to reports when you look at the that's the question  the contempt but then it went into the proceedings that over what generated the hours that's not the contempt proceeding it's collateral to it right and that brought it to the county i mean it wasn't something that you could put on the back burner because they were actively involved in these proceedings that ultimately resulted in the ninety six percent settlement so i'm not sure how you can say that did not benefit their clients i don't think we were knows when the who knows when the county would have paid or what it would have paid given the difficulties you've identified i'm not suggesting this was a a  you know some kind of venal motive but they they made sure that their client's interests were on the front rather than the back burner for the county well them getting paid versus us reporting are two different things yes but if the reporting had been delayed presumably the payments would have been delayed to respectfully judge i'm not sure there's a correlation there you could be making the payments and you just don't have time to generate the reports to give to the opposing side and they should have waited a little bit longer you know how bill opinion given what was going to stand we're not reviewing this in the first instance we are reviewing whether it was error by the district court and this is something we review for abuse of discretion so you have to tell us that no reasonable jack could have reached the conclusion here challenging judge i was in your position for a number of years in the state court i was loathe to ever reduce and attorney's fee ok because i believe attorneys have a right to make a living but when you look at nine hundred ninety eight hours ok this is  counting the first segment of the lawsuit this is just the content side of it i was involved in agent orange we didn't generate numbers like that i mean most respectfully it's it cries out that they should not get a windfall respectfully and if they were a private attorney as in all of the hills states ok no client in their right mind would pay four hundred seventy thousand dollars to get an does not support defendants argument here the district judge reviewed thousands of pages of documents heard argument read multiple briefs conducted in person in telephonic conferences and supervised the special master at rendel level this was not a case about reason for that your honor is entirely within the control of the defendant and was not an abuse of discretion by the district court who again had the advantage of the full record in the full supervision the reason for that is defendant at every single opportunity resisted efforts at enforcement this was not as defendant suggests it was absolutely your honor as set forth both in the record and in detail in our brief basically the structure of the settlement involve up period by which defendant was supposed to get itself into position to be able to timely process benefits to eligible households and a class action concerning food stamps medicaid and cash assistance defendant by the end of the ramp up period did provide there was evidence of hundreds if not thousands of applications being delayed and benefits not being paid this was not about the reports of the defendants suggests we gave them complete freedom smith reports  storm but built in and baked into the settlement agreement was the notion that they would provide emergency benefits to needy households in emergency circumstances storms and physical constraints notwithstanding this was the county's primary obligation they failed to do so we wrote to the county says every seven days for emergency food stamps your honor we cannot imagine a more strict mandate by the federal government in terms of compliance than to provide food stamps to a needy household within seven days of application here we had evidence of applications going on for thirty forty days not being processed and again hundreds so we contacted the county we asked for corrective action plan a corrective action plan was provided we asked for indications of how the proposed corrective action plan or relate to performance it was very easy for them to say we'll do x y and z but it was not clear how would correlate performance they failed to continue to provide information they simply said they needed up period they wouldn't tell us have we asked to engage in negotiations they refused they said they find they were the ones who finally said they want to go before the judge we gave them another opportunity to settle they chose not to we went before the judge they resisted and they made a counter motion to just extend without any additional corrective action the judge contra to defend its assertion that she was somehow bending over backwards to accommodate point to believe that somebody you need to get  jurisdiction we wound up before the special master the special master met with the defendants with us present at least nine times and had additional meetings without us present with submitted an interim report in the record your honor the interim report is very clear the special master doesn't look at questions like storms as the causative factor she instead looks at what it is the defend is doing in identifies lack of training lack of supervision your lack of compliance  i'm sorry i didn't hear a lack of compliance by the county answered she found significant lack of compliance she for example looked at forty applications and was only able to identify that were late it was only able to identify fourteen of those applications in the sample applicants which meant for the other twenty six roughly seventy something percent the county was at fault and it could not identify the reason for it if it were unfair and this was long past sandy this was long past the process so she master report and in the judge's findings and has demonstrated in this missions to the court below and i'm touching on that because that's part of the test here is whether or not the district judge had evidence and abuse the discretion reviewing that evidence declaration that you said yes your honor we submitted extensive documentation of the work that we did in support of the proceedings before the special master as a special master notes for example in one of her interim report that's one of the things we did is we provided information about what other counties were doing in order to timely comply with the processing of food stamps cash assistance and medicaid mandates we provided propose corrective action we consulted with outside experts we basically were trying to provide the kinds we reviewed extensive monitoring and did sampling of individual cases we were attempting to do what the county was not doing which was to identify the causes of the delay and  fixes to those items we prepare and monitoring and ways different from the county head in order to assist the special master and the county in showing that for example superstorm sandy had no impact on medicaid processing and only impacted food stamps for one month so to continue to rely on that was an invasion of responsibility yes this is basically a situation where the counties position this is institutional reform litigation if a prison were to say yes we would change the number of square feet per prisoner and then you spend three years making it happen getting the settlement was easy getting the outcome was more it was only after we had continued to meet propose solutions here before the special master work through the review process and ultimately come up with a solution that they did what they needed to do and district judge had the full record as your honor correctly points out the test here is whether or not any one of you might choose to do something differently the test is whether or not they can point to something the judge feuerstein did that is an abuse of discretion in the size of the what is not in and of itself an abuse of discretion question is did the district judge review the time spent which she does we view the activities that quietly so that which she does satisfied based on the quantum of work necessary to achieve the results as indicated by the record and the record if you spams three volumes and that's only a portion of the record that was before the district court but as indicated by the record of multiple court appearances multiple paragraph submissions conferences in person meetings at least nine meetings before the special master additional material submitted to the special master additional  material submitted to the district court this was a very vigorous attempt to enforce a program where people's lives were at stake and that's i think one of the things that the district judge did not lose sight of in terms of the degree to which she was willing to keep the pressure on the defendant and allow us to keep the pressure on the defendant to achieve the result and again this has absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether or not we were being supplied marjorie reports in a timely fashion we understood the delays in the provision of reports and that was never a problem and your honor couple of other things that defendant points to as part of its argument it fails to identify and this goes to judge jim's question about reasonableness it doesn't like the overall quantum but it fails to identify a single that it believes was in appropriately spent by plaintiff counsel in the section it had the opportunity to do so before the district judge saying that they have not made a specific challenge to a specific that is correct or on a part of what their burden was and what they really could have done before the district court is they could have said for example attorney cohen there be myself your honor spent six hours on this day writing that brief that brief was unnecessary that was an abuse and from time they didn't do that kind of breakdown as you say this the amount is just too much it's just they are uncomfortable they don't like it's an outcome with which they are not happy and this is not the first time in this case that occurred on the first the judge gave them a second opportunity to submit a more detailed objection to the they claim that we were submitting that were excessive they failed to do so on that application as well a consequence the judge granted us fairly close to the full amount requested i don't think there's anybody in the second circuit eastern district who would view judge feuerstein a somebody who writes a blank check at the expense of the taxpayer i think she's very careful judge who would demand full documentation before her we say we met that full documentation obligation with all due respect defendant did not he didn't do it before judge feuerstein in the briefing before you or he fails to identify the kind of time that would make the work being done a reasonable the test here isn't whether or not the fees are unreasonable the test is whether or not the fees correlate to the work and whether or not the work was unreasonable and judge feuerstein had the full record before her and was fully entitled to determine whether or not the amount of time spent by plaintiff counsel in pursuit of the outcome was in fact reasonable a gross example that was meant to be six minutes if you point this out i mean the problem that i see is that i think it was incumbent on you plan to point out and make specific challenges and instead i take it but if you can correct me if you think i'm wrong what you said was this i'm now broadly speaking is just to well the number of hours are certainly too high but the my colleagues enjoying their believe briefs head believe that it would go to a hearing at the hearing we get to go line by line and expose and find out what some of these entries are or because we don't even know