Opinion ID: 792212
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: ICO's Expert Witnesses

Text: 83 Honeywell challenges the District Court's decision to award more than $780,000 for the time and costs of three expert witnesses and their respective business entities, i.e. the award of (1) $389,807.59 for the work of Dr. Bruce Bell and Carpenter Environmental Associates; (2) $194,491.54 for the work of Dr. Ben Ross and Disposal Safety Incorporated (DSI); and (3) $184,492.31 for the work of Dr. Cheryl Montgomery and Cambridge Environmental. 84 As with the time claimed by counsel, the prevailing party bears the burden of justifying the time claimed by its expert witnesses. Similarly, the district court has the obligation to conduct a thorough and searching review of the time claimed by a prevailing party's experts. In this case, the District Court failed to do so. While the District Court did address one substantive argument raised by Honeywell (that ICO and ECARG should have retained the same experts), its analysis of the hours claimed by ICO's three experts was limited to the following: 85 The work performed by the experts retained by Plaintiff in this matter was vital to their success at trial. The work of the experts greatly assisted this Court in evaluating some of the more technical aspects of the litigation, and was also necessary to rebut the technical information presented by Honeywell. Accordingly, this Court finds that the work done by each of ICO's experts was reasonable based on the length and complexity of this litigation. 86 336 F.Supp.2d at 398. 87 The fact that the work of the experts assisted the Court does not, by itself, imply that the amount of time claimed by the three experts was reasonable. Rather, as was the case with the time ICO's attorneys claimed, the District Court has an obligation to `go line, by line, by line' through the billing records supporting the fee request. Evans, 273 F.3d at 362. Similarly, the Court must give us a sufficiently detailed explanation of its reasoning so that we can engage in meaningful appellate review. Since it failed to do so, we will vacate the award of fees for the three experts (and their respective business entities). 88 We also note that duplicative billing may have occurred. For example, Dr. Montgomery claimed that it took her 246 hours to prepare an expert report because she needed to review documents, but Dr. Montgomery separately billed another 570 hours for document review.
89 ICO requested reimbursement for costs incurred by three additional experts who assisted with trial preparation but did not testify. The District Court correctly observed that the law is not entirely clear as to whether a prevailing party may be compensated for the time of non-testifying experts, but it resolved the uncertainty in favor of granting ICO's request. It reasoned that, due to the complex and technical nature of the case, it was necessary for ICO's attorneys to consult with outside experts, even if those experts did not ultimately testify. 90 RCRA provides that the court may award costs of litigation (including reasonable attorney and expert witness fees) to the prevailing or substantially prevailing party, whenever the court determines such an award is appropriate. 42 U.S.C. § 6972(e). Honeywell submits that, since non-testifying experts are neither attorneys nor expert witnesses, a prevailing party may not be reimbursed for the costs of their time. 91 We have held that the fees of non-testifying experts are compensable in contempt proceedings, see Halderman by Halderman v. Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp., 49 F.3d 939, 942-43 (3d Cir.1995), but we have not yet determined whether a prevailing party is entitled to compensation for the costs of non-testifying experts under a fee-shifting statute. The circuit caselaw is, for the most part, not on point, and is a mixed bag. 92 The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit addressed this question in a case involving a fee award under a provision of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7607(d), which is virtually identical to the statute at issue here. See Sierra Club v. E.P.A., 769 F.2d 796, 812 (D.C.Cir.1985). In Sierra Club, the Court concluded that a party could not be reimbursed for the cost of hiring a non-testifying expert. It observed: 93 Mr. Lazaro [the non-testifying expert] is obviously not an attorney. He is also not an expert witness, since review of the regulations was undertaken in this case on the administrative record without any new hearings before this or any other court. Cf. Asarco, Inc. v. EPA, 616 F.2d 1153, 1157-61 (9th Cir.1980) (allowing limited use of expert testimony before District Court in reviewing order by EPA). This leaves only the general rubric of costs under which to compensate petitioners for making use of Mr. Lazaro's services. Those services do not fall under the traditional concept of costs . . . . 94 Id.; see also Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. E.P.A., 1998 U.S.App. Lexis 26041 (D.C.Cir. Sept. 3, 1998) ( per curiam ) (unpublished opinion). Sierra Club is only partially relevant to our analysis, however, because the opposing party in that case was the federal government. Thus, the fee-shifting statute acted as a waiver of sovereign immunity, and the Court was obligated to interpret the language of the statute in light of the principle that waivers of sovereign immunity are to be construed narrowly. See Sierra Club, 769 F.2d at 812 (citing Ruckelshaus v. Sierra Club, 463 U.S. 680, 685, 103 S.Ct. 3274, 77 L.Ed.2d 938 (1983)). 95 The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in contrast, has held that the fees of non-testifying experts are recoverable. See Sierra Club v. Hankinson, 351 F.3d 1358 (11th Cir.2003). Hankinson interpreted 33 U.S.C. § 1365(d), a fee-shifting statute which is virtually identical to 42 U.S.C. § 6972(e). Yet Hankinson is not directly on point either, as the fees in that case were incurred during the monitoring of a consent decree. Thus, since there was no ongoing judicial proceeding, all experts involved were non-testifying. Indeed, the Hankinson Court relied on this fact to distinguish Sierra Club v. E.P.A. See Hankinson, 351 F.3d at 1363. 96 The Supreme Court has held that the phrase reasonable attorney's fee can encompass work performed by individuals who are not attorneys. See Missouri v. Jenkins ex rel. Agyei, 491 U.S. 274, 285, 109 S.Ct. 2463, 105 L.Ed.2d 229 (1989). In Jenkins, the Court observed, Clearly, a `reasonable attorney's fee' cannot have been meant to compensate only work performed personally by members of the bar. Rather, the term must refer to a reasonable fee for the work product of an attorney. Id. In light of Jenkins, ICO has a strong claim that it is entitled to compensation for the work of the non-testifying experts, as they assisted the attorneys in preparing their ultimate work product. This view finds support in a decision of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit holding that, while the fees of testifying witnesses were not recoverable as attorney fees under a statute that did not separately reference expert witnesses, the fees of non-testifying witnesses were. That Court observed: 97 Experts are not only hired to testify; sometimes they are hired, also or instead, to educate counsel in a technical matter germane to the suit. The time so spent by the expert is a substitute for lawyer time, just as paralegal time is, for if prohibited (or deterred by the cost) from hiring an expert the lawyer would attempt to educate himself about the expert's area of expertise. To forbid the shifting of the expert's fee would encourage underspecialization and inefficient trial preparation, just as to forbid shifting the cost of paralegals would encourage lawyers to do paralegals' work. 98 Friedrich v. Chicago, 888 F.2d 511, 514 (7th Cir.1989). 19 99 We agree with this logic. The purposes of RCRA's fee-shifting provision would not be well-served by prohibiting reimbursement for the fees of non-testifying experts, at least to the extent that these experts serve to educate counsel in a technical matter germane to the suit. It is not unreasonable to expect that attorneys will rely on experts to educate them as to scientific and technical issues involved in a given case. Indeed, as the Seventh Circuit observed, prohibiting reimbursement for the fees of non-testifying experts would simply encourage attorneys to educate themselves, undoubtedly at a higher cost. Thus, we will affirm the District Court on this point.