Opinion ID: 792212
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Costs of Overtime and Temporary Employees

Text: 104 Finally, Honeywell challenges the District Court's decision to compensate ICO for overtime costs, the costs of temporary employees, and the cost of meals associated with overtime. The Court correctly noted that overtime and related costs are only reimbursable where there is a need for the additional employee or overtime, such as with an emergency. See 336 F.Supp.2d at 401. Honeywell argues that the District Court misapplied this principle, as it failed to identify a single instance in which the incurrence of temporary employee costs, staff overtime, or overtime meal costs corresponded to an unavoidable emergency. 105 Honeywell is correct that overtime costs may only be reimbursed when reasonably necessary. However, the District Court concluded that the amount of overtime at issue — 97.75 hours over approximately nine years — was reasonable in light of the complexity of the litigation and the tremendous number of documents that were produced and deadlines set by this Court. Id. at 402. We agree with the District Court that, in a complex, multi-year action such as this, a certain amount of overtime is inevitable. The amount at issue in this case (just over ten hours per year) does not strike us as at all excessive. Moreover, the District Court has a far greater understanding of the deadlines it imposed and the complexity of the underlying action. For this reason, we find that the District Court's conclusion that the amount of overtime and related costs claimed by ICO was justified by the complexity of the underlying action and the deadlines set by the Court was not an abuse of discretion. We will therefore affirm this portion of the fee award.