Savin v. Secretary of Health & Human Services

The Vaccine Act permits recovery only of “reasonable attorneys’ fees” and “other costs.” That reasonableness requirement applies equally to lawyer fees and litigation expenses, including expert or consultant charges. A Special Master may therefore exclude hours that are excessive, redundant, or unnecessary and may draw on experience reviewing fee applications, including experience with the attorney seeking compensation.

On review, factual findings and discretionary rulings receive arbitrary-and-capricious review, while legal conclusions are reviewed de novo. The court asks whether the Special Master considered the relevant factors and reached a result within the bounds of reasoned decisionmaking—not whether the reviewing court would have calculated the award differently.

Savin largely offered disagreement with the Special Master’s assessment of the consultant’s rates and hours, rather than evidence that the assessment was irrational. Unsupported disagreement did not satisfy the petitioner’s heavy burden to show that the reductions were arbitrary or capricious.

The billing records independently justified several fee reductions. The Vaccine Guidelines call for detailed, contemporaneous, task-specific entries. Yet counsel submitted vague entries, combined multiple activities into single time entries, included duplicative work, and in some instances described work performed over prior weeks rather than recording it contemporaneously. For example, one five-hour entry combined pleadings work, a client call, multiple consultant calls, and a meeting with another doctor, preventing a reliable evaluation of the time devoted to each task.

The Special Master was entitled to require an accurate and complete fee application when it was filed. She had no obligation to give counsel a second opportunity to reconstruct or clarify records that should have been specific and contemporaneous from the outset. Counsel also could not plausibly claim surprise: multiple special masters had reduced his fee and cost requests in numerous earlier Vaccine Act cases, including during the period when he created the entries at issue.

The Vaccine Act assigns the Special Master, not the parties, the responsibility to determine the reasonableness of a fee award. Respondent’s failure to object to an item does not transform that item into a reasonable charge or disable the Special Master’s judgment and common sense.

Accepting Savin’s position would produce untenable results. A Special Master could not be compelled to allow an obviously excessive charge—such as a $5,000 fee for a two-page extension motion—merely because respondent overlooked it or chose not to challenge it.

Savin relied on Third Circuit language suggesting that a judge may not sua sponte reduce a fee request. But the court explained that the authority underlying that language still permitted reductions based on the court’s personal knowledge of the proceedings. At most, that precedent barred unsupported reductions lacking a factual or experiential foundation; it did not apply here, where the Special Master relied on defective records and her experience evaluating fee petitions.

The weight of authority recognizes that courts have an independent duty to scrutinize statutory fee applications, including unopposed requests. The Court of Federal Claims had likewise held that a Special Master must independently ensure that an award is appropriate rather than simply accept or reject respondent’s critique. Because the record gave the Special Master ample grounds to question the challenged entries, she neither violated due process nor acted arbitrarily by reducing them without inviting further explanation.