Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 39 deals with the assessment of costs (which do NOT include attorney's fees) involved making an appeal. See generally here:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frap/rules.html
Under Rule 39, subsection (a)(3), "if a judgment is reversed, costs are taxed against the appellee." Every competent lawyer knows this and advises his client accordingly when an appeal is filed. It should not come as a surprise to any party at this stage that costs are taxable.
Under subsection (d), a party who wants costs taxed must—within 14 days after entry of judgment—file with the circuit clerk, with proof of service, an itemized and verified bill of costs. The other side has 10 days after service of the bill of costs to file objections.
The order on appeal was filed on Sept. 24, 2009. On October 6, Phelps filed an itemized bill of costs (costs.pdf below). The main component of the costs was copying fees for the appendix which accompanied a brief on appeal. As required by the Rules, the court's clerk ordered Snyder to pay them on October 16 (order costs. pdf below) because Snyder did not file objections on time. On October 23, Snyder (untimely) filed objections. On October 27, the Court directed Phelps to file a reply to Snyder's objections (see reply.pdf below)
Snyder advanced three grounds for objecting to the costs: first, that he had no money to pay them; second, that the duplication costs ($.50/page) were too high; and third, that the costs included duplicating extraneous and irrelevant material (see brief, pdf, objection.pdf, and declaration.pdf below). In my opinion, the third grounds (irrelevant material) in theory provided the best basis to reduce the costs, but Snyder failed to fully explain to the court which material was irrelevant and which was not. When making such an argument, it is incumbent upon the objector to specify what should have rightly been included in the appendix, and what irrelevant. But Snyder didn't do that. He left it for the court (or the clerk) to figure it out. Neither the court nor the clerk have any obligation to pore over the record to figure out what Snyder didn't bother to do. Phelps pointed all of this out in the Reply, and also fairly met the substance of the other objections.
In sum, the untimeliness of the filing combined with its sloppiness (there is at least one wrong citation, by the way) probably doomed the objections.
One last point. It took over five months for the Court to rule on the objections. That's five free months that Snyder received. Also, the Court denied the objections without referencing the delay in filing. Given that the delay is potentially malpractice, it also threw Snyder's lawyer a bone, in my opinion.