Opinion ID: 6498356
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Time Spent on Other Tasks

Text: Mr. Gardner also argues that the probate court erred in denying him compensation for the time he spent preparing summaries of services he performed and the time he took to electronically file several documents over the course of the year for which he was seeking fees. His fee petition contained nine entries involving the summaries, totaling 12.8 hours of work at a rate of $90 per hour for a total of $1152. For seven of the nine entries, Mr. Gardner described them as “prepared summary of description of services provided to date.” 10 Mr. Gardner further requested $18 for each instance in which he spent two-tenths of an hour 9 Mr. Gardner proffered this in his motion for reconsideration and states it again in his brief on appeal. 10 The other two entries were “[p]repared May detailed summary of guardianship services provided” and “[u]pdated detailed summary description of guardian services provided to date.” 10 electronically filing (1) his fifth guardianship report on December 31, 2018; (2) his sixth guardianship report on July 2, 2019; and (3) his fee petition on July 5, 2019. With respect to the summaries, the trial court found that their compilation was a clerical, noncompensable task and that Mr. Gardner’s method of updating his files was “excessive and redundant.” As to electronic filing, the court ruled that Mr. Gardner would properly be compensated for the costs associated with filing (such as the filing fee), but that the time spent actually performing the electronic filing was a clerical act that in the court’s view was noncompensable. 11 In reaching this conclusion, the trial court relied upon the unpublished (and nonprecedential) decision in In re Williams, No. 15-PR-1145, Mem. Op. & J. (D.C. July 7, 2017), in which this court affirmed the trial court’s disallowance of fees for certain clerical work—including “filings with the court”—where it was not appropriate to award “attorney (or even paralegal) rates” for such tasks and where “appellant never suggested any appropriate lower rate.” Id. at 6. 11 For similar reasons the trial court denied compensation for “reading notifications.” While it is less than clear which particular entries on the fee petition the court deemed to involve “reading notifications,” Mr. Gardner does not specifically challenge their disallowance on appeal and focuses instead on electronic filing. 11 The Guardianship Act authorizes a guardian to be paid from the Guardianship Fund for services he rendered “in connection with a guardianship,” D.C. Code § 212060(a)—language we have deemed to “have a very broad meaning” in identifying the services for which a guardian is entitled to be compensated. 12 In re Smith, 138 A.3d 1181, 1185 (D.C. 2016); see also id. at 1188 (stating that the Act “contains no limiting language or restrictive terms other than that the compensation promote the underlying purposes and policies of the Act”). We have held, for example, that the trial court has discretion to compensate a guardian for “work on an appeal in pursuit of a claim for compensation,” id. at 1185, and that a guardian need not show that the ward benefited from a task for it to be compensable, id. As to administrative tasks in particular, our cases have grappled with—or mentioned but declined to grapple with—what rates a guardian might reasonably charge for tasks that are largely administrative. See, e.g., In re Gardner, 268 A.3d at 859; In re Orshansky, 952 A.2d 199, 211 (D.C. 2008). But they evince few qualms about the Act’s compensation of administrative tasks as a general matter. See In re Brown, 211 A.3d at 169 n.5 (describing clerical tasks as tasks not compensable as 12 Mr. Gardner aptly notes that electronic filing is mandated by administrative order. See Super. Ct. Admin. Order 18-12. Mr. Gardner also states that “the probate division informed all Fiduciary Panel Members that they would be reimbursed for time and expenses related to e-filing.” 12 attorney’s fees). While not controlling, even Williams—the unpublished opinion the trial court relied upon in denying Mr. Gardner’s request for compensation for the time he spent filing his reports and petitions electronically—itself suggests that such tasks would be compensable, albeit at a rate lower than what attorneys charge. In re Williams, Mem. Op. & J. at 6; see also In re Orshansky, 952 A.2d at 211. The notion of a blanket rule precluding a guardian from seeking compensation for tasks that might be called administrative or clerical is at odds with our “expansive view of the kind of duties that are compensable under the Act,” In re Weaks, 224 A.3d 1028, 1034 (D.C. 2020). It is also at odds with the requirement in Super. Ct. Prob. R. 308 that guardians prepare reasonably detailed fee petitions that include “the character and summary of the service rendered.” The trial court has discretion, of course, to deny or reduce a fee request it does not deem reasonable, and that includes a fee for time spent on administrative tasks. Yet while the trial court characterized the fees for preparation of the summaries as “excessive”—the sort of ground on which the court has discretion to reduce or deny fees—the court plainly suggested that it viewed those fees as well as the fees for electronic filing as noncompensable clerical tasks that it was categorically denying. Because the court appeared to impose a flat rule prohibiting compensation for “clerical” tasks such as electronic filing and the preparation of summaries for a fee petition, and because the Guardianship Act authorizes payment for such services, we 13 remand to allow the trial court to determine the reasonableness of the requested compensation in light of our conclusion that they are, in fact, compensable. See, e.g., In re Estate of McDaniel, 953 A.2d at 1024-25. Mr. Gardner next argues that the trial court erroneously denied his request for $54 for the time spent taking Ms. Wilson to breakfast at McDonald’s rather than waiting outside an apartment for the people who were supposed to show the apartment to Ms. Wilson but who were delayed in getting there. In his petition for fees, Mr. Gardner characterized the expenditure as “treating ward to breakfast to encourage conversation, disclosures, and become better acquainted with the ward.” The trial court denied the request because, in its view, “[s]uch personal services are not compensable and the Guardianship Fund cannot be used for such services.” Contrary to the court’s characterization of “such personal services” as noncompensable, this court has made clear that “core aspects of a guardian’s services” are indeed “interpersonal in nature.” In re Robinson, 216 A.3d at 891. “A number of the general guardianship duties are aimed at ensuring that the guardian has enough regular contact with the ward that the guardian has an up-to-date understanding of the ward’s physical and mental health . . . .” Id. Mr. Gardner’s trip to McDonald’s with Ms. Wilson while they waited for people from Pathways to Housing and the Department of Aging to arrive to allow Ms. Wilson to view an 14 available apartment fit squarely within a guardian’s statutory duty to remain acquainted with his ward. D.C. Code § 21-2047(a)(1) (providing that a guardian shall “[b]ecome or remain personally acquainted with the ward and maintain sufficient contact with the ward to know of the ward’s capacities, limitations, needs, opportunities, and physical and mental health”). This brief detour while waiting to be shown an apartment is also difficult to separate from the day’s main and indisputably legitimate objective of helping Ms. Wilson secure housing. See D.C. Code § 21-2047(b)(2) (describing one of a guardian’s duties as “establishing the ward’s place of abode”). We therefore reverse the trial court’s conclusion that this type of expense was, as a rule, noncompensable. We leave it to the trial court to determine, on remand, whether the submitted fee was otherwise reasonable. 13