Board of Contract Appeals
                 General Services Administration
                      Washington, D.C. 20405


                                                                                                                               

      RESPONDENT'S MOTION TO COMPEL PAYMENT OF FEES GRANTED:
                        September 19, 2001
                                                                                                                               


                           GSBCA 15222


                 PARCEL 49C LIMITED PARTNERSHIP,

                                             Appellant,

                                v.

                 GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION,

                                             Respondent.

     Richard J. Conway and Robert J. Moss of Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky, LLP,
Washington, DC, counsel for Appellant.

     Catherine C. Crow and Jeremy Becker-Welts, Office of General Counsel, General
Services Administration, Washington, DC, counsel for Respondent.

DANIELS, Board Judge (Chairman).

                              ORDER

     Pending before the Board is respondent's motion to compel appellant to pay fees
relating to appellant's deposition of respondent's expert witness.  We grant the motion.

     The Board does not have a rule of procedure dealing specifically with this issue.  Our
Rule 101(d) provides, however, "In making rulings and issuing orders and directions
pursuant to these rules, the Board takes into consideration those Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure which address matters not specifically covered herein."  48 CFR 6101.1(d) (2000). 
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(4)(C) speaks directly to the subject at issue:

     Unless manifest injustice would result, . . . the court shall require that the party
     seeking discovery pay the expert a reasonable fee for time spent in responding
     to discovery under this subdivision.

We follow this rule.  General Distribution Services, GSBCA 8187-TD, 86-3 BCA   19,197;
see also Copy Data Systems, Inc., ASBCA 44058, 98-1 BCA   29,390 (1997).

     Appellant's reliance on Integrated Systems Group, Inc. v. Department of the Treasury,
GSBCA 11336-C(11214-P), 95-1 BCA   27,308 (1994), is inapposite.  That case involved
the question of whether the Board could impose monetary sanctions against a protester who
comes here in bad faith.  This case involves neither a request for monetary sanctions, nor a
protest, nor an allegation of bad faith.

     Respondent's expert has charged fees for three discrete periods of time associated with
his deposition: preparation for the deposition, testifying at the deposition (the bulk of the
time), and reading and confirming the transcript of the deposition.  Appellant does not
contend that manifest injustice would result from our requiring appellant to pay the expert
a reasonable fee for any of these periods of time.  Nor does appellant contend that the fee
proposed is unreasonable.  Consistent with Rule 26(b)(4)(C), then, we direct appellant to pay
the fees claimed.

     Requiring appellant to pay for the time the expert spent preparing for the deposition
is worth special mention.  In Copy Data Systems, the Armed Services Board of Contract
Appeals observed that United States district court rulings can be found both in support and
in opposition to a direction that the party calling an expert for deposition pay for the expert's
preparation time.  The Armed Services Board then concluded:

     We think the better rule is that unless factors rendering award of such time
     unjust, such as demonstration that the preparation is a substitute for pretrial
     preparation to be accomplished in any event, reasonable preparation time
     should be allowed.

98-1 BCA at 146,072.  We concur in this view.  In so doing, we note that the leading cases
reaching a contrary conclusion are from the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
(Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 138 F.R.D. 523, 526
(N.D. Ill. 1991); Rhee v. Witco Chemical Corp., 126 F.R.D. 45, 47-48 (N.D. Ill. 1989)), and 
more recent decisions of that court (Profile Products, LLC v. Soil Management
Technologies, Inc., No. 99-C-5870, 2001 WL 869566 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 1, 2001); Collins v.
Village of Woodridge, 197 F.R.D. 354, 356-58 (N. D. Ill. 1999)) are consistent with the more
common rule espoused by the Armed Services Board.






                                   _________________________
                                   STEPHEN M. DANIELS
                                   Board Judge