Opinion ID: 196096
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Restrictions on Discovery.

Text: to convene a full-scale hearing, appellants also complain that the court demonstrated too great an aversion to discovery initiatives. But unlimited adversarial discovery is not a necessary or even a usual concomitant of fee disputes, see National Ass'n of Concerned Veterans, 675 F.2d at 1329 (noting that, in general, fee contests should not involve the type of 12 searching discovery that is typical where issues on the merits are presented), and, in the circumstances of this case, we think that the court acted well within the province of its discretion in refusing to allow more elaborate discovery. The Due Process Clause does not require freewheeling adversarial discovery as standard equipment in fee contests. See Nineteen Appeals, 982 F.2d at 614. This case exemplifies the wisdom of the rule. The district court did not shut off all discovery, and the procedures that the court employed especially the compelled exchange of documentation minimized the need for additional discovery by giving the IRPAs the raw material that they needed to sift through the particulars of the PSC's fee application. In other words, the court ensured that the IRPAs had access to all the data reasonably necessary to formulate their objections,5 including all the PSC members' time-and-expense submissions, summaries thereof, detailed accounts of the procedures used by the PSC to gather, review, and audit time records, and the working papers, correspondence, and documentation generated by the PSC's accountants during the compilation process. With this banquet of information spread before them, appellants then partook of the court's liberality in allowing them to formulate extensive written submissions. Furthermore, the court below also had a right to 5The proof of the pudding is in the record. The IRPAs' initial submission to the district court highlighted specific objections to the PSC's fee request, and, following the PSC's rejoinder, the IRPAs' reply took precise aim at the accuracy of the supporting materials. 13 consider the extent to which appellants' request for discovery threatened to multiply the proceedings and turn the fee dispute into a litigation of mammoth proportions. Judge Acosta characterized the IRPAs' discovery foray which encompassed, inter alia, production of tax returns for employees of all PSC members' firms and details anent fringe benefits (including vacations, maternity leaves, and the provision of training programs) as a discovery scheme of needless and unreasonable proportions. It is surpassingly difficult to fault this characterization. The sweeping nature of appellants' request, coupled with the fact that the focus of the hearings had shifted away from the lodestar and toward a task-oriented assessment of the lawyers' participation in the litigation, give substance to the district court's fears that granting appellants' supplication would have started the parties on the road to a wasteful and time-consuming satellite litigation. On this ramified record, appellants can demonstrate neither a high level of need for incremental discovery nor preponderant equities in favor of their request. Hence, we cannot say that the district court's denial of further discovery constituted an abuse of the court's considerable discretion. See, e.g., National Ass'n of Concerned Veterans, 675 F.2d at 1329 (holding that district court retains substantial discretion based on its view of the submissions as a whole to limit further discovery).