Opinion ID: 215734
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Appellants' Motion for Attorney's Fees under EAJA

Text: Having won the judgment, appellants moved for attorney's fees and costs under EAJA, arguing that they were the prevailing party under § 2412(d)(2)(H), and asserting that their valuation of $6.1 million was closer to the district court's $3.8 million judgment than the government's $186,500 valuation. See Aplt.App., Vol. 2, at 412. Appellants further argued that the government's litigation position was not substantially justified because the government had previously valued the property variously at $2.2 million (by the district court's extrapolation from the government's actual purchase price of the other 87.5% mineral interest), at $1.875 million (in the Halmbacher Appraisal and the government's actual December 2001 purchase offer to defendants), and at $700,000 (in a valuation attached to the government's complaint). Id. at 413. Appellants asserted in their motion for attorney's fees that they had put on evidence that the value of their geothermal property was either $4.5 million or $8.9 million, and that the value of their non-geothermal property (that is, hard rock minerals) was nearly $1 million. See id. at 414. They did not mention that their expert, Dr. Albert, had testified that their property was worth as much as $30.6 million (at the hearing before the Commission) or as much as $33 million (at the hearing before the district court on their motion for sanctions). See id. Instead, they stated that the Commission had concluded that the value of their mineral interest was $6.1 million, and they then performed the mathematical comparison set out in § 2412(d)(2)(H) as if $6.1 million was their highest valuation of their mineral interest attested to at trial. See Aplt.App., Vol. 2, at 414-15. They stated that [f]ollowing the Special Commission's award of $6.1 million, Defendants adopted the Special Commission's award and filed their Motion to Adopt the Special Commission's Report. Id. at 415. They also noted that [s]eparate and apart from [their] Motion to Adopt the Special Commission's Report, [they] proffered the testimony of Dr. Mitch Albert on October 13, 2009 regarding damages suffered by Defendants in connection with the United States' untimely disclosure of the Van Court Supplemental Appraisal. Id. n. 1. They did not mention that the prejudice they claimed to have suffered was that their expert, Dr. Albert, would have testified based on the Van Court Supplemental Appraisal that their property was worth up to $33 million, even more than the $30.6 million value he had testified to at the hearing before the Commission. See id. As noted above, the district court denied appellants' motion for attorney's fees, holding that its $3.8 million judgment in favor of appellants was closer to the highest valuation testified to by the government's expert, $186,500, than to the highest valuation testified to by appellants' expert, $33 million, and that appellants therefore were not the prevailing party under § 2412(d)(2)(H). Aplt.App., Vol. 2, at 426-29.