6. Hours and Costs Related to and Necessary for Substantial Contribution

We first assess whether the hours claimed for the customer's efforts that resulted in substantial contributions to Commission decisions are reasonable by determining to what degree the hours and costs are related to the work performed and necessary for the substantial contribution.

We disallow compensation for several tasks, based both on PacifiCorp's comments and on our own analysis, as discussed below. The awarded amount is $14,005.29 less than the requested amount.

6.1. Self-Interested Efforts

Some of the work the Mackintoshes claim in their request benefited them directly without bringing benefits to other PacifiCorp customers. Thus, the issue of PacifiCorp's right to entry regarding the Mackintoshes' property relates only to the Mackintoshes' interests and we deny compensation for that work. We therefore disallow 1.40 hours of Brian Crossman's time and 5.50 hours of Sky Woodruff's time in 2007.

The Mackintoshes' work on the issue of "construction of the Mackintoshes' road" also constituted self-interested effort. We therefore disallow compensation for 2.00 hours of Crossman's work on this issue in 2007.

6.2. Flat 5% Administrative Fee

PacifiCorp objects to the Meyers, Nave law firm's assessment of a flat 5% "administrative fee" on its bill. We agree.

As we held in D.08-07-019, it is inappropriate to compensate the Mackintoshes for a flat 5% administrative fee assessed by their law firm. We do not allow an additional award for administrative overhead. See, e.g., D.98-11-049, 1998 Cal. PUC LEXIS 805, *5.1.3 ("Professional fees assume overheads and are set accordingly. We therefore deny additional recovery for clerical work."). We thus disallow the 5% fee assessed by the Mackintoshes' counsel. This disallowance is $2,134.25.

PacifiCorp objects that the Mackintoshes have requested $494.29 for recovery of "rush" filing fees. PacifiCorp states that these fees are excessive given the fact that the Commission has had an easy-to-use electronic filing system in place for over a year. The Commission began accepting electronically filed documents in September 2006. We agree that these fees were not reasonably incurred in light of the Commission's electronic filing procedures and therefore disallow these expenses.

6.4. Intervenor Compensation Matters

PacifiCorp also contends that the Mackintoshes spent an excessive amount of time on preparing their intervenor compensation request and asks us to disallow a portion of this time. We agree. The Mackintoshes spent 107.60 hours on intervenor compensation matters-more than 40% of the total time (268.60 hours) requested here.

First, the Mackintoshes seek recovery for 22.30 hours for "assembling costs" associated with the compensation claim for paralegal Hammond East. The Mackintoshes fail to demonstrate the reasonableness of the many hours they claim to produce a spreadsheet of costs. The spreadsheet is an itemization of time billed to this case. It appears simply to be a print-out of the Meyers, Nave timekeeping record for this case. We do not see how printing out contemporaneous time records prepared as part of the firm's normal timekeeping process could have taken more than 22.00 hours to accomplish. We therefore disallow this amount and all of East's time.5

PacifiCorp urges us to disallow compensation for the Mackintoshes' failure to comply with the Commission's Rules of Practice and Procedure when they filed a Motion for Protective Order and a reply brief. These activities took 3.80 hours of Crossman's time and 1.10 hour of Woodruff's time in 2007. We agree that as a matter of basic fairness, PacifiCorp should not have to pay for this error.

In addition, the Mackintoshes request compensation for 0.20 hours of Crossman's time spent on "Review of PUC Agenda" on January 29, 2008. They associate this activity with the preparation of the intervenor compensation claim. However, the task does not relate to this proceeding, so we disallow the time.

After the reductions discussed above, the remaining 80.20 hours are still excessive for a simple request for compensation like this one, especially because this is not the first request for compensation prepared by these intervenors. We reduce the authorized amount of time by two thirds and allow a total of 27.00 hours for compensation-related work.

5 PacifiCorp also objects to the amount of time the Mackintoshes' attorneys spent on their first request for compensation. Those objections are not timely, and we disregard them here. However, we did reduce the portion of the Mackintoshes' award attributable to preparation of the first request based on arguments PacifiCorp timely made at that juncture.

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