Reade, Linda R., United States District Judge
Defendant filed a bill of costs asking the court to tax
$51,233.51 against plaintiffs under 28 U.S.C. § 1920 after the court entered judgment for defendant on
plaintiffs’ professional negligence claim. The unsuccessful claim alleged that
defendant made false representations about the anaerobic digester that
plaintiffs had purchased to generate electricity from their cattle facility’s manure and paper sludge. The court granted $14,170.08 of defendant’s bill of
costs; the remainder was denied for various reasons.
First, the court did not tax plaintiffs for $150 in private process server fees because defendant itself acknowledged that the Eighth Circuit has held that such fees are not taxable.
Second, the court taxed plaintiffs for $9,336.79 of the $11,443.27 requested for transcripts. Defendant sought to tax plaintiffs for both the video recordings and the stenographic transcripts of the same depositions. The court rejected this attempt. Because the video and written transcriptions for each deposition were duplicative, plaintiffs could be taxed for one or the other, but not both.
Third, the court taxed plaintiffs for $3,156.44 of the $6,042.53 requested for copying costs. Over plaintiffs’ objections, the court awarded defendant those copying costs that defendant could demonstrate were “necessary rather than [merely] convenient.” For instance, the court awarded costs for TIFF conversion and uploading documents to Summation (a litigation-support software database) because these processes are analogous to “making copies” for trial. Even the defendant’s purely discovery-related expenses were recoverable because the document-intensive nature of the case rendered them necessary. Costs for copying defendant’s appendix and trial exhibits also were necessary for use in the case and therefore recoverable.
However, the court denied defendant’s attempt to recover costs for "convenient rather than necessary" measures such as binding and hole-punching copies. The court also disallowed recovery for OCR conversion and similar tasks that attorneys traditionally internalize; defendant failed to show these measures were “necessary rather than convenient.”
Finally, the court taxed plaintiffs for $2,676.85 of the $33,597.71 requested in witness fees. Defendant encouraged the court to exercise its discretion to award additional witness attendance fees for “crucial” expert testimony, but the court instead limited attendance fees to the statutory amount of $40 per day. The court also rejected defendant’s attempts to recover its witnesses’ mileage and subsistence costs in excess of those allowed by the General Services Administration.
v.
EXCEL ENGINEERING, INC., Defendant
Counsel
Kevin J. Caster, Samuel E. Jones, Shuttleworth & Ingersoll, Cedar Rapids, IA, for Plaintiffs.Jeffrey Allan Stone, Robert S. Hatala, Simmons Perrine Moyer & Bergman PLC, Cedar Rapids, IA, for Defendant.