eDiscovery Case Law: Not So Fast On eDiscovery Cost Reimbursement

http://ow.ly/9LmAH

An article by Doug Austin posted on the eDiscovery Daily Blog.

This article discusses attempts to seek cost recovery of eDiscovery expenses as part of the reimbursement sought by the prevailing party for litigation costs.

The article references that there will possibly be a reversal in a recent Southern District of New York case that awarded the winner the recovery of costs for eDiscovery expenses.  The article goes on to state, "One of the emerging trends for 2011 was the growing number of cases where the prevailing party was awarded reimbursement of eDiscovery costs, including this case and this case. Another case of eDiscovery cost reimbursement reported in this blog was Race Tires Amer., Inc. v. Hoosier Racing Tire, Corp., No. 2:07-cv-1294, 2011 WL 1748620 (W.D. Pa. May 6, 2011), where U.S. District Judge Terrence F. McVerry in Pittsburgh ruled that the winning defendants in an antitrust case were entitled to reimbursement of more than $367,000 in eDiscovery costs."

The article goes on to provide a quote from the court opinion that sheds more light on this matter, "“We conclude that of the numerous services the vendors performed, only the scanning of hard copy documents, the conversion of native files to TIFF, and the transfer of VHS tapes to DVD involved copying, and that the costs attributable to only those activities are recoverable under § 1920(4)‘s allowance for the costs of making copies of any materials. Those costs total $30,370.42. We find that none of the charges imposed by DMS‘s vendor are taxable, and that the award in favor of Hoosier should be reduced by$95,210.13, the difference between the electronic discovery vendors‘ charges awarded by the District Court ($125,580.55) and the charges of Hoosier‘s electronic discovery vendors we find taxable ($30,370.42).” {emphasis added}"