Opinion ID: 538388
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Items Lacking Specificity

Text: 45 The State contends that WVUH has failed to submit sufficient detail for many charges to enable the court to determine the time spent on the claims in which plaintiff did not prevail and to otherwise inform the court whether the time spent is excessive or otherwise unnecessary. The State further asserts that where the documentation is inadequate to disclose the subject matter of the activity, the hours claimed may not be compensated. Although we do not require absolute precision in a fee reimbursement petition, we do require some fairly definite information as to the hours devoted to various general activities. Pawlak v. Greenawalt, 713 F.2d 972, 978 (3d Cir.1983), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 1042, 104 S.Ct. 707, 79 L.Ed.2d 172 (1984). On occasion we have disallowed requests for fees when the fee petition inadequately documented the hours claimed. Rode v. Dellarciprete, 892 F.2d 1177 (3d Cir.1990). 46 As already noted, the application for fees and expenses contain in excess of 800 bookkeeping entries. The objections on the ground of non-specificity concern hundreds of these entries, some as minuscule as fifteen cents for photocopying. A court expects, especially in a case where counsel reasonably anticipates that fees will be shifted to the non-prevailing party, that the court will be provided with sufficient supporting data to intelligently make an award. To inform and assist the court in the exercise of its discretion, the burden is on the fee applicant to produce satisfactory evidence--in addition to the attorney's affidavits--, Blum v. Stenson, 465 U.S. 886, 896, n. 11, 104 S.Ct. 1541, 1547, n. 11, 79 L.Ed.2d 891 (1983), adequately supporting the nature of the charge, even assuming its reasonableness. 47 Regrettably, after wading through hundreds of entries in search of the necessary supporting information in this application, we find numerous entries have little to offer to pass judgment upon them. Moreover, many of the objections are to items which we have already rejected because they are irrelevant to the appellate proceedings in this court. We believe that the pragmatic approach to the resolution of these objections is to focus only on the items that are sufficiently identified and related to the appeal proceedings in this court. We have given the plaintiff the benefit of all reasonable inferences. Nonetheless, there still remain many items which cannot be sufficiently identified to be allowed.