Opinion ID: 1219144
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Scope of Work Performed in Defense of Tributary Claim

Text: AWDI contends that some of the attorney fees and expenses incurred by the objectors and attributable to the defense of the tributary claim were unnecessary or excessive. As principal support for that contention, it presented the testimony of two experienced natural resource attorneys at the fees hearing. The first expressed the opinion that some of the matters the objectors investigated, in particular the issue of potential injury to vested water rights, should have been deferred until after the court determined whether the water was tributary. Furthermore, in that expert's opinion, the objectors are not entitled to recover any costs of initiated discovery. He asserted that because the burden of proving absence of injury and sufficiency of water supply is on the applicant, the objectors' role is simply to stand back and take issue with what an applicant has presented, or request more information. Accordingly, any investigation beyond this would be inappropriate or a luxury and should not be the subject of compensation. The trial court, however, did not accept this view of the scope of activity reasonably to be conducted by objectors to an application for determination of water rights. The trial court properly rejected this passive model of an objector's role, pointing out the need for evidence from both sides in order to arrive at a correct resolution and the practical need or advantage for an objector to resist an adjudication of a water right in the first instance by demonstrating that an applicant cannot satisfy the criteria for establishment of such a right. AWDI's second expert witness on the excessive scope issue asserted that the amount of fees and expenses to be reimbursed should be reduced because the objectors failed to mitigate those fees and expenses. He contended that the objectors realized early in the litigation that no water contracts had been entered into between AWDI and any prospective beneficial users of the water. According to that expert, because such a defect is fatal to the application for determination of a tributary water right in this case, [44] the objectors should have moved for summary judgment on the tributary claim, and they should not now be compensated for the unnecessary fees and expenses incurred subsequent to the date at which this motion should have been made. The water contracts issue, however, was not relevant to some of the beneficial uses claimed by AWDI. [45] The trial court considered the expert's opinion and in its written order for attorney fees and expenses specifically found that there would have been genuine material fact [sic] at issue that would have required the Court to deny a motion for partial summary judgment on the tributary claim. [46] On this record, we cannot say that the objectors incurred unnecessary expenses because they did not seek partial summary judgment on the tributary claim. Lastly, AWDI contends that the number of experts hired by the objectors to analyze and review the State's ground water computer modeling was excessive and therefore wasteful. Based upon our review of the record of the fees hearing, we are satisfied that the trial judge adequately considered the reasonableness and the necessity of the services provided by those experts. For the foregoing reasons, and because our own review of the record discloses no suggestion that the objectors sought recovery for work not necessary to their defenses, we affirm the trial court's rejection of AWDI's arguments that the objectors incurred unnecessary fees and expenses by reason of the scope of their efforts in defending against the tributary claim.