Affidavit of Costs
September 20th, 2022
Pursuant to this Court’s Orders (Doc. 135 in CV 20-52-BLG-SPW; Doc 120 in CV-20-59-BLG-SPW-TJC) I, Ryan R. Shaffer, an attorney duly admitted to practice law in this Court, submit the following Affidavit and supporting documents of costs, expenses, and attorney’s fees directly resulting from litigation over Defendant Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania’s Motion to Dismiss (“WTPA’s Motion”) filed in the above captioned cases:
1. I am a Partner in the law firm of Meyer, Shaffer & Stepans and represent Plaintiffs in this matter.
2. Plaintiffs’ counsel has gone to great effort to ensure that costs, expenses, and fees claimed herein are accurate.
3. Costs and expenses were tracked contemporaneously, and where receipts are available, they have been provided. Declaration of Patti Gruwell attached as Exhibit A.
4. Attorney and paralegal time expenditures were not kept contemporaneously, but sufficient records and documentation existed to provide a basis for reasonable, and indeed very conservative, expenditures of billable time for each task in the litigation over WTPA’s Motion. See Declaration of Ryan Shaffer (attached as Exhibit B), Declaration of Robert Stepans (attached as Exhibit C), Declaration of James Murnion (attached as Exhibit D), Declaration of Matthew Merrill (attached as Exhibit E), and Declaration of Jessica Yuhas ( attached as Exhibit F).
5. Plaintiffs’ counsel’s goal in identifying the time expended on each task in the litigation over WTP A’s Motion was to ensure that the attorney’s fees claimed are conservative and actually reflect far less time than was required to litigate WTPA’s Motion. For instance: a. While all of Plaintiffs’ attorneys participated to varying degrees on the drafting and editing process of briefs filed with the Court, the only attorney time claimed is for Ryan Shaffer. The only exception to this is the voluminous Brief in Response to WTPA’s Motion (Doc. 96 in CV 20-52-BLG-SPW; Doc. 86 in CV-20-59- BLG-SPW-TJC) which required an exceptional amount of attorney James Mumion’s time.
b. Hundreds of hours of meetings, document review, emails, and phone calls were not claimed because there was no obvious and reliable way to reconstruct and claim that time. c. Where time entries were made, they were based on careful review of the actual documents and correspondence involved in the task and then given a conservative time expenditure that is likely far less than the actual time incurred. 6. As set forth in the attached supporting documentation, the total costs, expenses, and fees being claimed as a result of WTP A’s Motion are as
follows:
7. Based on my experience litigating civil matters in state and federal courts, $190,723.11 is a modest amount for litigation spanning seventeen ( 17) months that involves voluminous documents, multiple discovery disputes and associated motions and hearings, and significant substantive briefing to the Court. 8. Pursuant to prior Order of this Court, Defendants previously submitted payment of $22,631.80 related to discovery motions practice that was a result of WTPA’s Motion. (Doc. 93 in CV 20-52-BLG-SPW; Doc. 81 in CV-20-59-BLG-SPW-TJC). This amount was paid by Defendants and should therefore be subtracted from the amount now due. 9. Based upon the foregoing, the total amount of unpaid costs, expenses, and fees related to litigation over WTP A’s Motion that are now being claimed by Plaintiffs is $168,091.31.1 0.
Based upon the foregoing and the documents supporting this Affidavit, I affirm and certify that the amount now being claimed is a very conservative reflection of the actual time and expense expended litigating WTP A’s Motion.