MEMORANDUM AND ORDER RE: PLAINTIFFS' MOTION FOR RECOVERY OF REASONABLE COSTS AND FEES

GERTNER, District Judge.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. STATUTORY FRAMEWORK................................................................399
   A. The EAJA and the FTCA...........................................................399

   B. Relationship Between the EAJA and Sanctions under the Federal
         ules.........................................................................400
   C. Relationship Between § 2678 and § 2412 ...............................401

II. APPLICATION TO THE FACTS AT BAR...................................................402
   A. The Discovery Record............................................................402
      1. 2004-2005 ...................................................................402
      2. 2006 ........................................................................403
      3. Trial Counsel Had No Access to the Unredacted Documents......................407

III. ATTORNEYS' FEES COMPUTATION......................................................409
   A. Lodestar........................................................................410
   B. Costs...........................................................................410

This is the last motion that I must resolve in connection with this Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA") case against the United States Government. In this lawsuit, Peter Limone ("Limone"), Enrico "Henry" Tameleo ("Tameleo"), Louis Greco ("Greco"), and Joseph Salvati ("Salvati"), claimed that thirty-nine years ago they were convicted of a crime which they did not commit-the murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan ("Deegan"). Limone, Tameleo, and Greco were sentenced to die in the electric chair, a sentence reduced to life imprisonment when the Massachusetts death penalty was vacated. Salvati was also sentenced to life imprisonment. They accused the United States, specifically, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), of framing them for Deegan's murder by failing to disclose exculpatory documents and information, and then, by covering up FBI misconduct, ensuring their imprisonment over the next three decades. They brought this lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA"), 28 U.S.C. § 2671, et seq., on a number of grounds.

A lengthy memorandum and order was issued in July of 2007 awarding the plaintiffs judgment in the amount of $101,750,000.00, which the government appealed. Limone v. United States, 497 F.Supp.2d 143 (D.Mass.2007). The First Circuit affirmed, in part. Limone v. United States, 579 F.3d 79 (1st Cir.2009).

Within the appropriate period under the rules, Plaintiffs filed a motion seeking attorneys' fees and expenses pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2412(b) deriving from their contention that the United States acted in bad faith in the conduct of this litigation. The government opposed, arguing that there was no bad faith and, in any event, if the Court so found, it should award only fees and costs traceable to that conduct.

I find that there was bad faith conduct, but not with respect to the government's conduct in toto. While I emphatically rejected the government's substantive positions—certain of the defenses it interposed I labeled "absurd"—in the light of the First Circuit's decision, I cannot find them to have been asserted in bad faith. After all, while the First Circuit Court affirmed this Court's finding of intentional infliction of emotional distress, and the damage award, it agreed with the government with respect to plaintiffs' claim of malicious prosecution. It concluded that the FBI was not responsible for the state murder prosecution that victimized these plaintiffs; that prosecution was attributable to decisions of the state authorities.1 Nevertheless, there was a pattern of bad faith conduct that the First Circuit has not addressed, with which this Court was intimately familiar—that is, the government's conduct in connection with discovery.

This was a document case from start to finish; many of the witnesses were dead or ailing. The plaintiffs' case had to be painstakingly pieced together through materials that were not publicly available. Indeed, secrecy—and secrecy gone awry—was central to the litigation. Documents concerning the "Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program" and the abuses committed in its name, including those that were the subject of this lawsuit, had been purposefully withheld, not only from state law enforcement, but from other divisions within the FBI. The program did not become known to the Department of Justice until 1995, during extraordinary proceedings before Judge Mark Wolf in United States v. Salemme. United States v. Salemme, 91 F.Supp.2d 141 (D.Mass.1999); Limone v. United States, 497 F.Supp.2d at 153. The record revealed FBI agents "hiding the ball," not disclosing critical exculpatory information in the Deegan murder case for nearly forty years, information that would have exonerated the plaintiffs. As I noted in my decision:

Limone v. United States, 497 F.Supp.2d at 161.

The problem with the government's conduct went beyond mere delay. The government blocked access to the relevant documents—hiding behind specious procedural arguments, baseless motions to stay and "emergency" motions to defer production, culminating in a frivolous interlocutory appeal. While the government may have had a legitimate concern about protecting informant identities—what they insisted was their core concern—that protection was hardly absolute and unreviewable. Roviaro v. United States, 353 U.S. 53, 77 S.Ct. 623, 1 L.Ed.2d 639 (1957) the seminal case on the disclosure of informant identities contemplates a balance between the public interest in protecting the flow of information on the one hand, and an individual's right to prepare his or her case, on the other, a balance which a judicial officer is to strike based on the facts before her. Until pushed by myriad orders of the Court, the defendants prevented the Court from making a considered decision. They would not disclose—even in camera—until ordered to do so, why, for example, a deceased informant's forty year old information deserved protection. They constantly refused to disclose the facts on which these claims of privilege were based. They would have this Court, the parties, the lawyers, the public, simply trust that they had previewed the documents in good faith, and redacted information they simply had to protect.

When, at long last, the Court was on the verge of awarding sanctions against the defendants, there was an extraordinary admission. The lawyers representing the government, who had signed the pleadings during the two years of discovery, who were familiar with the plaintiffs' allegations, and who were subject to the discipline of this court, including the disciplinary provisions of Rule 11 and Rule 26(g) Fed. R. Civ. Pro.—had not been given access to the discovery in its unredacted form at all. See Order to Show Cause, December 12, 2006 (document #494). While Rule 26(g), Fed. R. Civ. Pro., requires that every disclosure be signed by "at least one attorney of record" who is supposed to make a "reasonable inquiry" that the "disclosure is complete and correct as of the time it is made," trial counsel was in no position to make these representations. Only the general counsel of the FBI was able to decide what should or should not be redacted because only she (and presumably her agents at the FBI) was authorized to see them. But the FBI's general counsel refused to enter an appearance in the case. She would not come to court to justify the redaction decisions that had been made, in effect to demonstrate her good faith. Put simply, the lawyer in front of me lacked the authority to see the unredacted documents, and the lawyer who had that authority was not in front of me!

On December 12, 2006, over two years from the first discovery motion, I ordered that the matter be brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI, to "answer the Court's concern that counsel be given the tools they need to defend these charges, namely access, as officers of the Court, to the documents relevant to the case at bar." See Order to Show Cause. And with that Order, the logjam was broken.

Notwithstanding my findings of bad faith, however, I was not able to order an amount of attorneys fees on the initial attorneys' fees record in front of me. The records that the plaintiffs provided, while complete and voluminous, did not lend themselves to easily identifying which conduct was attributable to the bad faith discovery abuses that I found. Accordingly, I issued this opinion in draft form, and ordered supplemental briefing on the question of which fees were attributable to the bad faith abuses.2 That briefing is now complete. This memorandum first describes the statutory framework that applies to the claims and its application to the case at bar, then the facts and the remedy.

I. STATUTORY FRAMEWORK

A. The EAJA and the FTCA

Congress passed the Equal Access to Justice Act ("EAJA") to make certain that "private parties will not be deterred from seeking review of, or defending against, unjustified governmental action because of the expense involved in securing vindication of their rights.". Maritime Mgmt., Inc. v. United States, 242 F.3d 1326, 1331 (11th Cir.2001) (quoting H.R.Rep. No. 99-120(1), at 4 (1985), 1985 U.S.C.C.A.N. 132, 133). The statute allows a court to award attorneys' fees to parties that prevail in civil litigation against the government when either 1) the common law or 2) a statute authorizes such fees. 28 U.S.C. § 2412(b). Courts have recognized certain common law exceptions to the "American Rule," the rule that each party bears his own fees: the exceptions are "common fund," "common benefit," "willful disobedience of a court order," and "bad faith." Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 45, 111 S.Ct. 2123, 115 L.Ed.2d 27 (1991); Maritime, 242 F.3d at 1331; Lucarelli v. United States, 943 F.Supp. 157, 158 (D.P.R.1996). Specifically, the EAJA, 28 U.S.C. § 2412(b) provides:

(Italics supplied.)

The EAJA has two attorneys' fees provisions: § 2412(d), under which an award of attorneys' fees is mandatory in certain cases when the government's position was not "substantially justified;" and § 2412(b), under which an award of attorneys fees is permitted when authorized by another statute or by the common law.

Since the former, § 2412(d), expressly excludes "cases sounding in tort,"3 plaintiffs rely on § 2412(b) and allege bad faith. In Chambers, the Court noted that fees may be awarded when the losing party has "acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons." 501 U.S. at 33, 111 S.Ct. 2123. A finding of subjective bad faith is not necessary so long as the moving party can demonstrate that the losing party's actions were in fact objectively "frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation," Local 285, Serv. Emp. Int'l Union, AFL-CIO v. Nonotuck, 64 F.3d 735, 737 (1st Cir.1995) (quoting Washington Hosp. Ctr. v. Serv. Emp. Int'l Union, 746 F.2d 1503, 1510 (D.C.Cir. 1984)). While the First Circuit broadly noted that this power should be used "sparingly" and should be reserved for "egregious circumstances" Jones v. Winnepesaukee Realty, 990 F.2d 1, 4 (1st Cir. 1993),4 that characterization is misleading. In the same case, the Court held that egregious conduct could include a "litigants' repeated efforts to stall a case, harass other participants, and frustrate the operation of the justice system." Jones, 990 F.2d at 5. Thus, bad faith conduct, so defined, includes a wide variety of actions that led to the lawsuit as well as actions during litigation. Roadway Express, Inc. v. Piper, 447 U.S. 752, 765-66, 100 S.Ct. 2455, 65 L.Ed.2d 488 (1980). And as to all such actions, the plaintiffs bear the burden of showing bad faith. United States v. Ford, 737 F.2d 1506, 1509 (9th Cir.1984).

B. Relationship Between the EAJA and Sanctions under the Federal Rules

A court also has the inherent power to award fees for bad faith despite the fact that the conduct identified—like discovery abuse—might also have warranted sanctions under some other provision of the law. In Chambers for example the Supreme Court concluded:

501 U.S. at 50, 111 S.Ct. 2123. See also, United States v. Horn, 29 F.3d 754, 760 (1st Cir.1994) (". . . even though a particular abuse is covered by a specific statute or rule, a court may still invoke its supervisory power to address the abuse if the existing remedial provision is inadequate to the task.").

To be sure, as the Court noted in Chambers, where the bad faith conduct can be adequately sanctioned under the rules, that is the preferable course. 501 U.S. at 50, 111 S.Ct. 2123. But where, as here, the conduct is beyond the reach of the rules and is "intertwined within conduct that only the inherent power could address," Id. at 51, I may use the fee shifting provision of the EAJA to address it. As described below, the civil rules were not adequate here to sanction the government. The government represented that dire consequences would attend the disclosure of forty year-old information and—until ordered to do so—would not explain why. While the Court used every procedural device in its arsenal, the government still stalled this case for years, up until the very eve of trial.

The principle sanctioning tool that the Court had, Rule 11, and even Rule 26(g) (which is addressed to discovery abuses) was inadequate. Trial counsel for the FBI was not given the authority to look at the unredacted documents; they were, in effect, classified not only as to the plaintiffs but also to the entire government trial team. Only her client, the FBI, had access. Trial counsel's representations to this Court, implying that everything had been turned over that was appropriate for disclosure, that redactions had been made in good faith, were without basis. She was simply parroting the representations of the FBI—a defendant in this case, who—ironically—were being sued for withholding exculpatory information. Crucial decisions in the litigation—what to produce or not produce, what to redact or not redact— were made by the very party whose failure to turn over critical, exculpatory, documents over forty years ago led to this lawsuit. The charade finally ended on December 12, 2006, during the trial when the Court entered an Order to Show Cause to insure that the issue of access be brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI. See Order To Show Cause.

C. Relationship Between § 2678 and § 2412

The FTCA's provision for attorneys' fees, 28 U.S.C. § 2678, provides that "[n]o attorney shall charge, demand, receive, or collect for services rendered, fees in excess of 25 percentum" of any FTCA judgment. The government argues that this provision precludes a separate fee award, apart from a 25% contingency agreement, "under almost all circumstances." Additionally, the government points to that provision of the EAJA providing for mandatory attorney's fees when the government's position is not "substantially justified," and argues that it specifically excludes tort cases, like the case at bar. 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A). As a result, the government argues, Congress must have intended that the government generally not be held liable for attorney's fees over and above their 25% share of the recovery.

In Lucarelli, the district court rejected this position, explaining that the 25 % provision was meant to protect clients, not the government. 943 F.Supp. at 157. Nor does the tort exception to mandatory fees under § 2412(d) apply to permissive fees under § 2412(b):

Lucarelli, 943 F.Supp. at 158; see also Bergman v. United States, 844 F.2d 353, 355 (6th Cir.1988) (reaching the same conclusion); Havrum v. United States, 204 F.3d 815, 819 (8th Cir.2000) ("We have held that where the government has acted in bad faith it may be required to pay attorney's fees under § 2412(b), and we assume, without deciding, that such awards are available in FTCA actions." (citations omitted)).

I agree with the reasoning in Lucarelli. I hold the FTCA's 25% provision does not limit the award of attorneys' fees (apart from any contingency fee agreement) where those fees can be traced to the parties' bad faith conduct.

II. APPLICATION TO THE FACTS AT BAR

A. The Discovery Record

The case law appropriately requires a detailed explanation of the bad faith conduct supporting an award of attorney's fees, Mullane v. Chambers, 333 F.3d 322, 338 (1st Cir.2003), which follows here:

Document production was entirely controlled by the FBI. The FBI denied plaintiffs access to the unredacted versions of the documents, notwithstanding the myriad orders of this Court. Discovery abuses included the repeated defiance of court orders to produce, the repeated filing of meritless motions to stay or reconsider discovery orders and last, but not least, the redaction of discovery materials without a review by the attorney who signed the pleadings, the attorney who had entered an appearance in the case.

1. 2004-2005

In 2004, plaintiffs moved for the production of documents that were plainly relevant to the case. The government's response initially was entirely appropriate. Pls.' Mot. (document # 235). It sought a protective order because the material involved sensitive information on confidential informants and third parties not involved in the litigation. Pls.' Mem. in Supp. of Mot. (document # 236 at 2). In November 2004, the Court immediately granted the Government's motion insofar as it set up a procedure for claiming privilege, for objecting to the claim of privilege and for enabling the parties to litigate the issue before the Court. The problem was that the government never followed its own order.

Following the November 2004 order, the government sent the plaintiffs carton loads of documents. The documents were effectively incomprehensible. They were heavily redacted. Some had nothing more than a heading; sometimes the same document was reproduced elsewhere with different redactions. It was accompanied by a barely readily log which identified the category to which the redaction belonged—informant privilege, etc.—but not the facts on which the redaction was based.

The plaintiffs moved to compel production of the unredacted material, the first of many such motions.5 The government opposed on entirely procedural grounds—the plaintiffs had not followed the rules, did not confer in advance, filed the request late, etc. They did not address the merits of the request at all. See e.g., Defs.' Opp'n to Pls.' Joint Mot. to Compel Prod. of Doc. (document #284); Defs.' Opp'n to Pls.' Second Joint Mot. to Compel Prod. of Doc. (document #293); Defs.' Opp'n to Pls.' Third Joint Mot. to Compel Prod. of Doc. (document # 324).

To be sure, the Government had a right to rely on the procedural rules, to complain about the failure to confer, or about untimely objections to their submissions— as any party was entitled to do. But they were hardly without fault. They had turned over 40,000 documents in a form that, from the perspective of the parties, was impossible to understand and, from the perspective of the Court, impossible to use for the purpose of coming to reasoned judgments about what should or should not be protected. As described below, they continued to certify that the documents redacted or withheld were privileged (informant's privilege) without doing what parties in discovery are supposed to do—provide the Court with information as to how those privileges applied to the materials that were provided. It was no surprise that it took months for the plaintiffs to unscramble the documents they had been sent—to the extent they were able to do so. (Nor was it any surprise that the plaintiffs required numbers of lawyers and paralegals to staff the case—as their application for attorneys' fees reflects.)

The government claims in its opposition to plaintiffs' motion for fees, that it was entitled to withhold documents that were based on the informant's information. After all, it suggest this Court ultimately upheld the privilege.

The claim is profoundly disingenuous. The government asserted the privilege with respect to large numbers of documents, redacted huge swatches of others. With each discovery wave and order of the Court, the documents as to which it claimed privilege were reduced—but this was with substantial effort on the part of the Court and of counsel. It took countless hours to finally force the government to come to grips with its obligations. And, the government persisted in refusing to disclose the bases for its claim of privilege—not the category, but the facts. It did not do so until 2006, years into the case. Nevertheless, with respect to this period, 2004-2006, I will give the government the benefit of the doubt. I will take responsibility for not being as clear about the government's disclosure obligations as I should have been. Accordingly, I will not find bad faith in connection with pre 2006 discovery.

2. 2006

Finally, on March 26, 2006, the Court specifically ordered the government to provide "not just the facts of the privilege, but the information on which it is based," if necessary in camera. See March 26, 2006 (document #352).6 While the government produced some documents, on April 27, 2006, it withheld many others, continuing to file motions to block their disclosure. The docket reflects the numbers of hearings the Court was obliged to hold, and the successive discovery orders the Court was obliged to issue, each more and more detailed, and candidly, more and more strident.

First, the government argued that it should be required to produce only those documents which it deemed relevant to summary judgment with the rest of their production stayed. Then they suggested that plaintiffs already had all the information they needed, according to the government's view of plaintiff's case—that the government already knew that Jimmy Flemmi was not prosecuted for the Deegan murder, but was involved in it, and that the FBI failed to pass that information on to the state authorities. The "name of the informant who provided the information is irrelevant to . . . these theories of liability," the government claimed. Defs.' Resp. to Order (document #354 at 2). At the same time, the government was insisting that the FBI's role—as they characterized it—was not sufficient to make it responsible for the state prosecution. Reduced to its essentials was the claim that the plaintiffs did not need the information requested because the Court should simply adopt the government's defense as true— that "all" the government did was to make Barboza available and nothing more. Defs.' Resp. to Order at 7.

At other times the government insisted that the burden was on the plaintiffs to show why they needed the unredacted materials. The position made no sense. The plaintiffs could not show why they needed the documents until they knew what they were looking at. And, in any event, in order to do an independent investigation, the plaintiffs needed to know who had provided the information on which the FBI had relied, whether the informants were credible, whether the informant gave inconsistent tips, or whether their information was contradicted by other information the FBI had.

These positions necessitated another order (dated July 4, 2006):

(Italics supplied).

The government's response was to file yet another "Emergency Motion to Stay Order Compelling Names Pending Resolution of United States' Summary Judgment Motion." Def.'s Mot. (document #375).

Over the next several months, as the trial date loomed, although more documents were produced, the government persisted in claiming that it was entitled to simply announce the privileges it was asserting, without meaningful explanation of the facts relating to each claim (a position, sadly, it insists on in its briefing on fees to this day). After the Court denied summary judgment, and set a trial date, the Court's impatience with the government's position was palpable. On October 15, 2006, the Court entered the following order:

(Italics supplied).

The government moved for an emergency stay to "assess its appellate options," a position which this Court once again found to be disingenuous. Defs.' Mot. (document #438). My order, on October 17, 2006 denying the stay, makes clear the facts why:

The Government filed another Emergency Motion for a Stay of Disclosure Orders Pending Appellate Review both with respect to 1) the specific documents that had been the subject of this Court's earlier orders and the informants' identities that disclosure involved, and 2) the remaining documents that had been produced in redacted form (some 7,000 pages). Defs.' Mot. (document # 452).

By October 30, 2006, the plaintiffs moved for evidentiary sanctions, representing that the FBI had refused to identify the informants whose names were contained in certain specified documents. Pls.' Mot. for Sanctions (document # 455). On November 2, 2006, the Court declined to stay the orders one moment more:

(Italics supplied.)

The government filed a petition for mandamus which was shortly denied.

Finally, on November 13, 2006, the Government filed a notice of production of unredacted documents for in camera review, months after they had been ordered to do so. Defs.' Notice of Pro. of Unredacted Doc. (document # 467). Trial began on November 16, 2006, even though some of the discovery issues remained unresolved.

The government's behavior from March 2006 to December 2006 was unquestionably in bad faith. The issue is not what ultimately happened—when the government finally met its obligation to disclose ex parte the basis for its claims of privilege, when it finally narrowed its objections to a finite set of documents. The issue is how long it took them to get to that point and how much effort Plaintiffs' counsel had to expend. That effort should not go uncompensated.

3. Trial Counsel Had No Access to the Unredacted Documents

On November 20, 2006, during a hearing on one disputed exhibit, trial counsel for the defendants, who had been involved in the discovery disputes for two years, confirmed that she had never seen the unredacted documents that were supposed to be produced. Only the FBI had that access—the very entity charged with failing to turn over exculpatory evidence forty years before. Small wonder that trial counsel could not respond on the merits to the myriad discovery motions. She had no idea what was in the unredacted material.

The Court ordered the Government to provide certification that an attorney with an appearance in this case had reviewed the discovery materials for their compliance with Rule 26. By December 12, 2006, the Court was compelled to file an Order to Show Cause:

Within a week, the government agreed to comply. Less redacted versions were sent to the plaintiffs. At the same time, the Government moved for permission to separately file sealed material to the Court. The Court reviewed the material and issued additional orders requiring production under the protective order that had been drafted and signed years before. To be sure, the Court sustained the Government's objections to disclosure but only with respect to a very, very small number of documents and surely not the voluminous materials as to which the claim was initially made.

To this day, the government insists that "DOJ trial counsel were entitled to rely upon the FBI's expertise as to the assertion of the informant's privilege." Defs.' Resp. (document # 688 at 1). Relying on the FBI's expertise is one thing. Ceding all control of discovery to one's client, without informing the court, is quite another.

All told, discovery motions consumed two years, multiple court orders, motions for sanctions, five motions to stay, four court orders. And it continued even into the trial as the Court noted:

Limone, 497 F.Supp.2d at 173 n. 69.8

III. ATTORNEYS' FEES COMPUTATION

There is no doubt that there was bad faith in connection with the government's conduct during discovery. The government played a shell game—dumping vast numbers of documents that were so redacted as to be incomprehensible, interposing procedural objections to delay taking any substantive position, repeatedly filing specious objections to discovery, and then specious motions for a stay, culminating in the disclosure that trial counsel had no access to the unredacted documents. To be sure, I do not find that trial counsel made misrepresentations to the Court. In reviewing all of the submissions, and all of the orders, it is clear that trial counsel never once affirmatively stated that they had personally reviewed the unredacted versions of the discovery. Nor did they say the opposite.

Nevertheless, it was reasonable for the Court to infer that the lawyers who had entered an appearance in the case were fully informed about whether the government had fulfilled its discovery obligations. I appreciate the position trial counsel found itself in, caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, a client unwilling to cooperate with them, and a court pressing them for information. But the finding of bad faith accrues to the government's—here, the client's—conduct and is fully supported on this record.

As the plaintiffs argue, some courts have held that if a district court makes a bad faith finding under the EAJA, it may award fees and expenses for the entire litigation. See Gray Panthers Project Fund v. Thompson, 304 F.Supp.2d 36, 42 (D.D.C.2004); see also Comm'r, Immigration and Naturalization Serv. v. Jean, 496 U.S. 154, 161-62, 110 S.Ct. 2316, 110 L.Ed.2d 134 (1990) (explaining that awards for the entire litigation are appropriate under a related provision of the EAJA governing mandatory awards, § 2412(d), which does not apply here). The government notes that other courts have concluded that fees awarded for bad faith should be traceable to the bad faith conduct. See Rodriguez v. United States, 542 F.3d 704, 713 (9th Cir.2008); Brown v. Sullivan, 916 F.2d 492, 497 (9th Cir.1990). I agree with the Government and ordered that the plaintiffs identify that portion of their fees attributable to the bad faith discovery practices of the Government. They have done so. I will award fees in connection with bad faith discovery practices from March 2006 to December 2006.

A. Lodestar

In evaluating the fees, I am to use the lodestar approach to identify unreasonable, duplicative, or excessive time spent on the case. See Guckenberger v. Boston Univ., 8 F.Supp.2d 91, 99-100 (D.Mass.1998). The plaintiffs' memo sets forth the reasonableness of the hours, the steps taken to avoid duplicative tasks, reasons to include fees for unsuccessful claims, justifications for plaintiffs' chosen hourly rates, and a request for inclusion of time spent preparing the motion for fees, and I so find. Pls.' Mem. (document # 581 at 31-39). While the government objects to payments for multiple lawyers at hearings representing a single client, the Court can attest to the extraordinary complexity of the case and the need for backup. Indeed, the trial presentation was remarkably well organized with each set of plaintiffs allocated a certain time and set of issues.

I find that the plaintiffs' hourly rate to be reasonable and the work of counsel was not duplicative.

B. Costs

Plaintiffs request costs regardless of whether there is a finding of bad faith. See 28 U.S.C. 2412(a) ("Except as otherwise specifically provided by statute, a judgment for costs, as enumerated in section 1920 of this title, but not including the fees and expenses of attorneys, may be awarded to the prevailing party in any civil action brought by or against the United States or any agency or any official of the United States acting in his or her official capacity in any court having jurisdiction of such action. A judgment for costs when taxed against the United States shall, in an amount established by statute, court rule, or order, be limited to reimbursing in whole or in part the prevailing party for the costs incurred by such party in the litigation."). The government opposes certain costs, such as travel, meals, accommodations, and consulting services, as unreasonable and excessive. Def.'s Opp'n (document # 595 at 44-46); see also Pls.' Reply (document #601 at 13-18). I adopt the Government's position on costs and have recomputed the figures accordingly.

I hereby award the following:

____________________________________________________________________________
     Attorney Name    Amount Requested     Amount Granted
____________________________________________________________________________
    Juliane Balliro    $676,541.76 (fees)    $532,954.00 (fees)
                       $176,619.00 (cost)     $87,707.80 (cost)
                       $867,910.67 (total)   $620,662.00 (total)
____________________________________________________________________________
    Michael Avery        $34,735.00          $9,225.00
____________________________________________________________________________
   William T. Koski       N/A9          $23,430.00
____________________________________________________________________________
   Joseph B. Burns       $70,791.50          $22,248.00
____________________________________________________________________________
     Victor Garo         $11,070.00           $7,640.00
____________________________________________________________________________
  Richard Bickleman      $37,258.71          $19,334.74
____________________________________________________________________________
  Daniel R. Deutsch      $32,877.35          $14,206.65
____________________________________________________________________________

This award was calculated based on the time sheets submitted by Plaintiff's counsel. All redactions and objections were taken into account. In Plaintiff's "Supplemented Motion on Behalf of the Salvati Plaintiffs For Recovery of Reasonable Fees and Costs," paralegal TCS was listed at an hourly rate of $100, however in the submitted time sheet, TCS was billed at an hourly rate of $120. Pls.' Mem. (document #686-1 at 3); Pls.' Mem. (document # 686-2 at 2). I have calculated the hourly rate of TCS at $100. Included in the award for Balliro, Bickleman, Deutsch and Avery is an additional $14, 750, $2,538.87, $2,650 and $3,375 respectively in response to my June 20, 2011 order, 2011 WL 2489965, which represents the amount of time spent to prepare the fees petition.

I have awarded $87,707.80 to Juliane Balliro in costs.10 The remaining Plaintiffs attorneys did not submit any documents regarding cost and therefore I will not grant costs on their behalf.

SO ORDERED.