Prindle v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, 23-0346V

Dale Prindle filed a petition for compensation under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, alleging a shoulder injury from a 2020 influenza vaccine.
The case was previously settled, and Prindle received a compensation award per the parties' stipulation.
Petitioner then moved for an award of attorney’s fees and costs totaling $25,594.78, with fee documentation provided.
The respondent agreed that statutory requirements for a fee award were met but left the amount to the special master's discretion and did not object to the requested rates or costs.
Upon review, the court determined a minor reduction for certain attorney tasks improperly billed at attorney rates instead of paralegal rates.
The court awarded $25,307.98 in combined attorney’s fees and costs, to be paid directly to petitioner’s counsel.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Reasonableness of attorney's fees	Fees and rates requested are reasonable	Statutory requirements met,	Minor reduction for some tasks;
	and consistent with prior awards	amount left to court’s	otherwise, fees largely awarded as sought
		discretion
Reasonableness of attorney's costs	All claimed costs are well-documented	No objection	All costs awarded in full
Proper billing classification of certain tasks	Certain document prep billed as attorney	No specific argument	Such tasks should be billed at paralegal
	work		rates; reduction applied

Saxton v. Sec’y of Health & Human Servs., 3 F.3d 1517 (Fed. Cir. 1993) (court has discretion to reduce attorney fee requests to a reasonable number of hours)
Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424 (1983) (excessive, redundant, or unnecessary hours should be excluded from fee requests)
Broekelschen v. Sec’y of Health & Human Servs., 102 Fed. Cl. 719 (2011) (need not do a line-by-line analysis when reducing fees)
Wasson v. Sec’y of Health & Human Servs., 24 Cl. Ct. 482 (1991) (petitioner bears burden of proving fees and costs requested)