Opinion ID: 792212
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: ICO's Claimed Hours

Text: 60 A prevailing party is not automatically entitled to compensation for all the time its attorneys spent working on the case; rather, a court awarding fees must decide whether the hours set out were reasonably expended for each of the particular purposes described and then exclude those that are `excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary.' PIRG, 51 F.3d at 1188 (citation omitted). Thus, in reviewing the hours claimed in a fee application, a district court must conduct a thorough and searching analysis to identify such charges. Evans, 273 F.3d at 362. The court may not reduce an award sua sponte; rather, it can only do so in response to specific objections made by the opposing party. Bell v. United Princeton Properties, Inc., 884 F.2d 713, 719 (3d Cir.1989). But once the opposing party has made a specific objection, the burden is on the prevailing party to justify the size of its request. 61 Honeywell argues that the District Court erred in refusing to slash the size of Terris's fee award to account for billing that was excessive, duplicative, or otherwise redundant. In Honeywell's submission, the following charges claimed by ICO are grossly excessive: 62 &#x2022; 1,058 hours spent preparing proposed pretrial findings of fact and conclusions of law 63 &#x2022; 471 hours spent preparing post-trial findings of fact and conclusions of law 64 &#x2022; More than 890 hours dedicated to matters related to the pretrial order 65 &#x2022; More than 730 hours of attorney time spent reviewing documents. 66 &#x2022; More than 360 hours preparing a motion for summary judgment 67 &#x2022; More than 2,790 hours of paralegal time 16 68 Honeywell objected to these charges before the District Court. In support of its objections, Honeywell submitted an affidavit prepared by Michael Caffrey, an attorney with the New Jersey law firm of Lowenstein Sandler, Honeywell's trial counsel, detailing the results of a review he conducted of ICO's submission. Caffrey's affidavit compared the time claimed by ICO for the above tasks with what he concluded would have been a reasonable amount of time for the same work. 69 Where Caffrey concluded that ICO's attorneys had spent more time than required on a given task, he reduced the hours to what he considered to be an appropriate level. He offered justifications for his proposed reductions, although in many cases the explanation he offered consisted of the word Excessive. On appeal, Honeywell argues that the District Court erred in refusing to reduce ICO's award in accordance with the recommendations in Caffrey's affidavit. In addition, it argues that the findings made by the District Court in granting ICO's fee request were inadequate. 17 70 In support of its excessiveness argument, Honeywell concentrates on a number of areas, starting with the 1,529 hours spent on preparing findings of fact and conclusions of law. That amounts to approximately thirty-eight forty-hour weeks, a sum that seems to us to be staggering, and well beyond the pale. This amount represents, under Honeywell's calculations, over four hours for drafting each page, as well as 471 hours to update, post-trial, the proposals which were prepared pretrial in 1058 hours. This also is excessive, especially in light of the fact that the pre-trial and post-trial findings of fact and conclusions of law were so similar. As Honeywell points out: 71 [M]ore than 130 out of 165 of Plaintiff's proposed post-trial conclusions of law were identical to its pretrial conclusions of law. And, more than 330 out of 494 of Plaintiff's proposed post-trial findings of fact were identical or substantively identical (with the exception of the substitution of a trial record citation) to Plaintiff's pretrial proposed findings of fact. 72 Furthermore, Honeywell notes that the overall time spent preparing the findings of fact includes 228 hours of partner time, which, under the matrix adopted by the District Court, is compensable at a rate of $456 per hour. That factor seems to us to warrant close scrutiny. 73 While the trial was indeed protracted, and the record huge, there must be some limit. We need not decide these points because we agree with Honeywell's second argument: that the District Court's review of the hours claimed by ICO's attorneys was simply inadequate. However, we do express our reaction for the benefit of the District Court which will have to address these issues on remand. 74 In most respects, the District Court approved the challenged aspects of the fee award with little more than a sentence. For example, in approving the 471 hours spent preparing post-trial findings of fact and conclusions of law, the District Court observed: 75 Honeywell asserts that the time expended on the preparation of post-trial findings was excessive and should be reduced to 200 hours. However, Honeywell provides no justification for this figure. Accordingly, this Court concludes that the hours expended by Plaintiffs are reasonable. 76 336 F.Supp.2d at 391. The District Court appears to have misapprehended its role, improperly placing a burden of proof on Honeywell that simply does not exist. 18 While it is true that, as we have noted, the district court cannot decrease a fee award based on factors not raised at all by the adverse party, Loughner, 260 F.3d at 178 (citations and internal quotations omitted), nonetheless, the burden remains on the party requesting the fee to prove its reasonableness, and the court has a positive and affirmative function in the fee fixing process, not merely a passive role, id. Here, the District Court's conclusory reasoning constituted an abdication of that function. 77 Where an opposing party lodges a sufficiently specific objection to an aspect of a fee award, the burden is on the party requesting the fees to justify the size of its award. In determining whether the moving party has met its burden, we have stressed that it is necessary that the [District] Court `go line, by line, by line' through the billing records supporting the fee request. Evans, 273 F.3d at 362. Where the opinion of the District Court is so terse, vague, or conclusory that we have no basis to review it, we must vacate the fee-award order and remand for further proceedings. Gunter v. Ridgewood Energy Corp., 223 F.3d 190, 196 (3d Cir.2000). Such is the case here. For this reason, we will vacate the award in this case with respect to the six items Honeywell challenges in its appeal. 78 This is a voluminous and protracted case, and we are not unmindful unmindful of the difficult job the District Court faces in reviewing the fee application. In performing this task, the District Court is entitled to help from the fee objector. Indeed, we have observed: 79 [T]he adverse party's submissions cannot merely allege in general terms that the time spent was excessive. In order to be sufficient, the briefs or answers challenging the fee request must be clear in two respects. First, they must generally identify the type of work being challenged, and second, they must specifically state the adverse party's grounds for contending that the hours claimed in that area are unreasonable. The briefs must be specific and clear enough that the fee applicants have a fair chance to respond and defend their request. Bell, 884 F.2d at 720 (footnote omitted). Honeywell objected to numerous aspects of ICO's fee request on the ground that the time spent by specific attorneys was excessive. It could (and should) have been more specific. Still, as Honeywell points out, Bell and later cases have accepted as sufficient objections of a more general nature than the ones at issue here. E.g., Bell, 884 F.2d. at 721; Planned Parenthood, 297 F.3d at 269. 80 Thus, since Honeywell carried its burden in objecting to certain aspects of the proposed fee award, ICO had an obligation to justify those portions of the award, and the District Court had an obligation to conduct a searching review of ICO's request. It did not, hence we vacate and remand for further proceedings.