Sumotext Corp. -v- Zoove, Inc.
- Beth Freeman
- 5:16-cv-01370
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 6
In Sumotext Corp. v. Zoove, Inc., Judge Freeman denied StarSteve’s request to recover $14,804 in electronic-discovery costs.
StarSteve, LLC’s request for $14,804 in Logikcull electronic-discovery costs was denied, leaving the Clerk’s taxation of costs in place.
What happened
In Sumotext Corp. v. Zoove, Inc., StarSteve asked the court to review the Clerk’s decision not to award $14,804 in electronic-discovery costs. The Clerk had already awarded StarSteve $10,927.30 in other costs.
The court decided to consider StarSteve’s late motion because it found good cause for the delay. But the court concluded that StarSteve’s records did not show which electronic-discovery tasks were actually performed in this case or whether the monthly fees involved taxable copying and document-preparation work rather than storage, hosting, or other nonrecoverable services.
Judge Freeman held that the Clerk properly disallowed the $14,804 in Logikcull fees and denied StarSteve’s Motion for Review of the Clerk’s Taxation of E-Discovery Costs.
The detailed version
- Sumotext Corp. -v- Zoove, Inc. · No. 5:16-cv-01370
- Beth Freeman
- Aug. 23, 2021
Background
Sumotext brought antitrust claims against StarSteve, Zoove, Virtual Hold Technology, and VHT StarStar. A jury returned a verdict for the defendants, and judgment was entered for them on March 6, 2020. StarSteve later submitted an amended bill of costs seeking $26,046.10, including $14,804 for disclosure and formal-discovery documents.
The $14,804 request represented portions of monthly subscription fees that StarSteve’s counsel paid to Logikcull, a cloud-based electronic-discovery platform. Counsel allocated portions of the monthly fees to StarSteve based on its claimed usage. The Clerk awarded StarSteve $10,927.30 in costs but disallowed the Logikcull fees because the supporting documents did not itemize or support the full amount claimed.
Motion and legal standard
StarSteve filed a motion asking the court to review the Clerk’s taxation of costs. The motion was filed after the deadline in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d)(1). The court found good cause for the late filing and exercised its discretion to consider the motion.
Under 28 U.S.C. § 1920(4), a prevailing party may recover certain fees for exemplification and the costs of making copies when the copies were necessarily obtained for use in the case. The district’s local rules allow the cost of reproducing disclosure or formal-discovery documents when used for any purpose in the case. The court explained that recoverable electronic-discovery costs may include physical preparation and duplication of documents, such as scanning or converting files, but generally do not include hosting data, storage fees, or intellectual work such as searching, analyzing, and distilling information.
Court’s analysis
StarSteve submitted a chart listing tasks that Logikcull could perform, but the chart did not establish which tasks were actually performed for this case during each month. The court also could not determine whether the fees related to documents produced in this litigation or merely to material uploaded to the platform.
StarSteve’s counsel submitted a declaration stating that the fees were required to produce electronic documents and comply with the court’s electronic-discovery order. The court found that the declaration still did not provide enough specific information to determine whether the $14,804 consisted of taxable costs. The court therefore found that the Clerk properly disallowed the Logikcull fees.
Disposition
The court DENIED StarSteve’s Motion for Review of the Clerk’s Taxation of E-Discovery Costs. The order terminated ECF 530.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.