Opinion ID: 517427
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Reach of Crawford.

Text: 65 In federal jurisprudence, the shifting of litigatory expenses is generally governed by statute. See, e.g., 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1920 (costs taxable by court include [f]ees and disbursements for ... witnesses); 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1821 (Except as otherwise provided by law, a witness in attendance at any [federal] court ... shall be paid an attendance fee of $30 per day....). In Crawford Fitting Co. v. J.T. Gibbons, Inc., supra, the Supreme Court explained that section 1821 limits the amount of witness fees awardable, and section 1920 allows a court to tax such fees as costs only within those limits. 107 S.Ct. at 2497-98. In the absence of statutory or contractual authorization for more generous payments, federal courts are constrained by the $30-per-day cap when ordering one side to pay for the other's expert witnesses. Id. at 2499. 66 Crawford involved an award to prevailing defendants covering expenses reasonably incurred for experts, bestowed under the authority of Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(d). 10 The Court concluded that Rule 54(d) must be administered in conjunction with existing statutes; therefore, the rule does not provide a separate source of limitless discretion to tax expert witness fees as costs. Crawford, 107 S.Ct. at 2497-98. Our pre-Crawford precedent under Rule 54 hewed to much the same line. See Bosse v. Litton Unit Handling Systems, 646 F.2d 689, 695 (1st Cir.1981) (in diversity case, expert's fees above statutory amount cannot be taxed under authority of Rule 54); see also Templeman v. Chris Craft Corp., 770 F.2d 245, 249-50 (1st Cir.) (similar), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1021, 106 S.Ct. 571, 88 L.Ed.2d 556 (1985). 67 Appellant asks that we treat this case as parading around the same old stamping ground and reduce the fees for plaintiff's experts drastically to conform with the section 1821 ceiling. The imprecation, however, is deceptively simplistic; in reality, PMC seeks not merely to enforce Crawford, but instead to elongate it beyond the contours of Rule 54, extending its holding to situations where express fee-shifting statutes apply. 11 The march is not an inevitable one; the Crawford majority clearly recognized that the $30 limit, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1821, could be superseded by statutory or contractual authorization, if sufficiently explicit. 107 S.Ct. at 2499. See also IWA v. Champion International Corp., 790 F.2d 1174, 1179 n. 7 (5th Cir.1986) (listing twenty-eight federal statutes authorizing award of expert witness fees), aff'd sub nom. Crawford Fitting Co. v. J.T. Gibbons, Inc., 482 U.S. 437, 107 S.Ct. 2494, 96 L.Ed.2d 385 (1987); cf. United States v. Metropolitan Dist. Comm'n, 847 F.2d 12, 20 n. 10 (1st Cir.1988) (affirming award of expert witness fees under Federal Water Pollution Control Act, 33 U.S.C. Sec. 1365(d)). As three Justices pointed out in Crawford, the decision did not treat with awards to prevailing plaintiffs under the Fees Act, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988. See Crawford, 107 S.Ct. at 2499 (Blackmun, J., concurring); id. at 2500 n. 1 (Marshall and Brennan, JJ, dissenting). 68 The ADEA, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 626(b), expressly incorporates the fee-shifting mechanism of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which provides that a court: 69 shall, in addition to any judgment awarded to the plaintiff or plaintiffs, allow a reasonable attorney's fee to be paid by the defendant, and costs of the action. 70 29 U.S.C. Sec. 216(b). Insofar as cost-shifting is concerned, laws such as 29 U.S.C. Sec. 626(b) and 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988 seem sisters under the skin. Most notably, the ADEA's legislative history reveals that Congress viewed it as similar to earlier, more traditional enactments. See H.Rep. No. 805, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., reprinted in 1967 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News at 2213, 2214. We agree that, [a]lthough the Age Discrimination in Employment Act is not a civil rights act within the meaning of section 1988, age discrimination cases commonly cite section 1988 cases on fee questions. Heiar v. Crawford County, Wisconsin, 746 F.2d 1190, 1203 (7th Cir.1984); cf. Wildman v. Lerner Stores Corp., 771 F.2d 605, 609-14 (1st Cir.1985) (adopting section 1988 analysis anent counsel fees in ADEA case). Therefore, section 1988 jurisprudence seems pertinent in considering recoverability of expenses in ADEA cases. And, because a federal civil rights type of statute containing a separate cost-shifting provision is at issue in this case, Crawford, without some further extrapolation, would not be directly controlling. See, e.g., Sapanajin v. Gunter, 857 F.2d 463, 465 (8th Cir.1988) (award of experts' fees in civil rights case proper because not made as a taxation of costs pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1821, but as an expense under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988 ... Crawford Fitting thus does not apply); but cf., e.g., Sevigny v. Dicksey, 846 F.2d 953, 959 (4th Cir.1988) (Sec. 1988 does not provide statutory authority for the awarding of compensation for non-legal experts). 71