*1 Before the Court is Defendants Colaberry, Inc. and Ram Katamaraja's motion for a show cause order and to hold Plaintiffs Novedea Systems, Inc. and Anand Dasari in contempt. Docket No. 260. For the reasons and as explained below, the Court GRANTS the motion in part.

Despite Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a)(1)(A)'s requirement for a party to provide damages calculations, Plaintiffs waited until just a few weeks before the January 2022 trial in this case to provide the required disclosures. See Docket No. 172. Based on Plaintiffs' late disclosure and the alleged prejudice resulting from it, Defendants moved to strike the tardy disclosures. Id. To resolve this issue and pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(c)(1)(A), the Court allowed Defendants to conduct additional discovery relevant to the disclosures to cure any potential prejudice but required Plaintiffs to pay half of all reasonable attorneys' fees and costs Defendants incurred in conducting this additional discovery.[1] Docket No. 185.

Pursuant to the Court's order, Defendants deposed Plaintiff Anand Dasari and created supplemental expert reports to rebut Plaintiffs' new damages calculations. Docket No. 260 at 2. Defendants incurred total attorneys' fees and costs of $48,349.15 for the deposition and expert reports. Id. On March 23, 2022, counsel for Defendants requested payment of half of these fees—$24,174.58—from Plaintiffs. Docket No. 260-2. Defendants allege that Plaintiffs have not paid this amount.

Plaintiffs do not generally dispute these facts. Instead, Plaintiffs claim that Dasari does not have the ability to pay—primarily because he does not have access to Novedea's corporate bank accounts. Docket No. 265 at 3. Plaintiffs also challenge the amount of the expert report expenses as “exorbitant.” Id. at 4. And Plaintiffs argue that a supersedeas bond or stay of execution is more appropriate than requiring immediate payment due to the likelihood of appeals. Id. at 6.

Dasari's inability to pay provides no justification for failing to comply with the Court's previous order. While inability to comply with a court order is a plausible defense, Dasari has not satisfied his burden of production for that defense. See, e.g., United States v. Rylander, 460 U.S. 752, 757 (1983). Dasari has provided only a bare affidavit attesting that the facts stated in his response to Defendants' motion are true and correct. Docket No. 265-3. That is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that Dasari has no ability to pay anything toward the sanction he now owes. Further, Dasari has continued to litigate this case for another ten months, including participating in a second trial, and presumably incurring additional expenses, since he made this argument.

The Court does agree with Plaintiffs, however, that the expert fees Defendants incurred in January 2022 are excessive under the circumstances. See Docket No. 260- 1, 260-2. Combined, Defendants two experts billed $34,283.75 for 64.5 hours of work to generate supplemental expert reports. The supplemental reports were based on documents produced by Defendant Colaberry and previously available to Defendants' experts. Further, Defendants' experts had already produced their initial expert reports and only needed to supplement the earlier reports based on Plaintiffs' late disclosures. Thus, the experts were already well familiar with the subject matter. See, e.g., Molina v. United States, 2008 WL 3539253, at *1 (W.D. Tex. Aug. 11, 2008) (finding an expert's 21 hours of preparation for a deposition unreasonable); GWTP Investments, L.P. v. SES Americom, Inc., 2007 WL 9712172, at *3 (N.D. Tex. Jan. 30, 2007) (finding an expert's 17.5 hours of preparation for an 8.5-hour deposition excessive); Bulkley & Assocs., Inc. v. Paccar Inc., 2014 WL 12663214, at *1 (E.D. Tex. Sept. 30, 2014) (reducing expert fees based on excessive amounts of time billed). Based on the excessive time billed by Defendants' experts, the Court will only require Plaintiffs to pay 25% of the expert expenses. This results in a reduction of the expert fees owed by Plaintiffs from $17,141.88 to $8,570.94. All other expenses remain the same, resulting in a total amount due from Plaintiffs of $15,603.64.

*2 For the reasons explained above, the Court GRANTS in part Defendants' motion for a show cause order and to hold Plaintiffs in contempt (Docket No. 260). The Court ORDERS that Plaintiffs shall pay Defendants the sum of $15,603.64 within ten days of this Order. Failure to timely pay may result in further sanctions.

So ORDERED and SIGNED this 2nd day of March, 2023.