Opinion ID: 400063
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund

Text: 6 These organizations were petitioners in some of the cases consolidated into the principal litigation, and in others were intervenors on the side of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Sierra Club seeks $29,088 and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) $5,880 as attorneys' fees, 10 based on an hourly rate of $48. EPA has not challenged that rate, and we have no doubt as to its reasonableness. EPA does, however, contest the inclusion of attorneys' time for some activities. 7 More specifically, EPA opposes the request for fees for most of the work done by these groups as intervenors on its behalf, on the ground that their efforts were duplicative of the agency's own efforts. If ever an intervenor can recover attorneys' fees from a party on whose side it participated-a question we do not here reach-the justification would have to be a clear showing of some unique contribution of the intervenor to the strength of that party's legal position. Here, the environmental groups have not demonstrated with any sort of particularity that their intervention added in any essential way to EPA's stance on the issues involved. 11 Without deciding more, we hold that wherever the bounds on fee awards to such intervenors should be set, this threshold burden has not been met. 12 8 We view differently, however, two superficially related but actually distinct matters. First, Sierra filed a brief in response to certain motions for reconsideration of our decision, and the parties have discussed fees therefor in the context of Sierra's status as an intervenor. It was on specific request of the court, however, that Sierra dealt with one of the three issues that received approximately equal attention in the brief, and EPA concedes the propriety of fees for that work. 13 We therefore allow them, 14 without determining how awards of fees to intervenors might be handled in more typical situations. Second, on another facet of that brief-EPA's motion for a stay of issuance of our mandate-Sierra and EPA were adversary parties. We accordingly approve the claim for attorneys' services in that regard. 15 9 We encounter little difficulty in granting Sierra attorneys' fees for their activities as petitioners, 16 nor in awarding the sum Sierra seeks principally for time spent in preparing materials supporting its request for such fees. 17 In so doing, we reject EPA's objection to the inclusion of approximately 68 hours of work devoted by Sierra to the case generally. Sierra accounts for the time in itemized fashion, and states that at least some of it went to coordinating procedural aspects of the litigation and in organizing a joint brief for the environmental petitioners, but it cannot relate the time expenditures to particular issues. In the overall circumstances of the case, we are content to approve in full the amounts requested. 10 EPA also resists inclusion of time required by research on an ex parte-contacts issue, which was later withdrawn to permit us to reach the substance of the exemptions for fugitive dust and 50 tons of particulate matter per year. This research plainly harmonized with the congressional objective underlying fee allowances; moreover, as heretofore we have observed, decisions on fee-allowance cannot make wholesale substitutions of hindsight for the legitimate expectations of citizen plaintiffs. 18 We therefore have counted the time consumed by this activity in computing the grant of fees. 11 Finally, EPA objects to a reimbursement request by Sierra's attorneys for such items as travel and postage in connection with the litigation simply because no receipted bills are presented. We are content to rely upon the integrity of counsel, and allow these expenses. 19