Opinion ID: 170441
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Propriety of Fee Amount in This Case

Text: Third, Appellant charges that the district court did not attempt to explain which costs were truly `excess' and thus subject to award under Sec. 1927. Aplt's Br. 26. He states that opposing counsel's use of block billing, id. at 27, that is, lumping multiple tasks into a single entry of time, Cadena v. Pacesetter Corp., 224 F.3d 1203, 1214 (10th Cir.2000), disguises the true nature of the items billed for. Mr. Southerland produced two accountings of the time spent on this multiplicative proceedinga chart sent to Mr. Hammons during the attempts to negotiate and an affidavit submitted to the courtand Appellant now argues that the district court failed to make express findings resolving the lack of specificity of these documents and inconsistencies between the two. Additionally, he presents a series of objections to specific billing entries, for instance that the claimed time spent reviewing his May 11 email and the draft of the Motion to Enforce was not extraordinary although it seems somewhat longer than necessary to review the documents in question. Aplt's Br. 31. The district court heard these same objections. It explained that only fees and expenses incurred as a result of [the Motion to Enforce] are compensable, and accordingly rejected certain hours and reduced others where Mr. Southerland's affidavit indicated time was spent pursuing the filing of Ms. Taylor's stipulation of dismissal with prejudice. App. 196. The court also disallowed time charged for clerical functions and hours charged as travel time for Mr. Southerland's trip from Houston to Oklahoma City to attend the show-cause hearing on the sanction. We cannot find an abuse of discretion here. At the outset, we observe that matters concerning, for example, how much time was properly spent carrying out a certain litigation task are far better determined by the district court, which is intimately familiar with the parties, the attorneys, and the complete course of the litigation, than by an appellate court. The district court therefore enjoys wide discretion in making decisions of the sort challenged here. The court here performed a conscientious review of Mr. Southerland's billing, separating by fractions of hours time spent on tasks arising out of the Motion to Enforce from time that would have been spent without it. It explained why it was granting certain objections and rejecting others. And although the court's written opinion did not expressly state how the hours assessed were spent, the court implicitly adopted Mr. Southerland's affidavit except to the extent of the sustained objections. Where, as here, a district court's findings and reasons are made plain to the attorneys involved and to a reviewing tribunal, and especially where the contents of a sealed document are involved, the requirement of specific findings is satisfied by an opinion referencing the record documents with sufficient clarity. See Braley, 832 F.2d at 1512. Upon our own review, we find no merit to any of Appellant's challenges to the opinion or to the specifics of the billed time.