Borges v. County of Mendocino
- Susan Illston
- 3:20-cv-04537
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Borges v. County of Mendocino, Judge Illston overruled plaintiffs’ objection and directed taxation of the County’s $9,344.91 bill of costs.
Ann Marie Borges and Chris Gurr were required to pay the County of Mendocino’s taxed costs.
What happened
In Borges v. County of Mendocino, Ann Marie Borges and Chris Gurr objected to the County’s bill of costs. They agreed that the County was the winning party but asked the court not to award costs.
The court explained that the rules generally favor awarding costs to the winning party, although a judge may refuse them. It found that the $9,344.91 in costs was reasonable, the case did not involve broad public issues, the legal questions were not especially close, and the plaintiffs had not shown that paying the costs would cause financial hardship.
Judge Susan Illston overruled the plaintiffs’ objection and directed the Clerk to formally assess the bill of costs listed at Docket No. 120.
The detailed version
- Borges v. County of Mendocino · No. 3:20-cv-04537
- Susan Illston
- June 27, 2023
Background
Plaintiffs Ann Marie Borges and Chris Gurr objected to the County of Mendocino’s bill of costs. They did not dispute that the County was the prevailing party, meaning the party that won the case. Instead, they asked the court to exercise its discretion not to award costs under the factors identified by the Ninth Circuit.
The bill sought $9,344.91. The opinion describes the underlying case as primarily involving the plaintiffs’ “class of one” challenge to the County’s denial of their application to cultivate marijuana and the County’s zoning decisions.
Legal Standard
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d)(1) generally requires costs other than attorney fees to be allowed to the prevailing party. The rule creates a presumption in favor of awarding costs but allows the district court to decline them. The factors the plaintiffs relied on included the case’s public importance, the closeness and difficulty of the issues, the possibility of discouraging similar lawsuits, the plaintiffs’ financial resources, and the parties’ economic disparity.
Court’s Analysis
The court found that the requested costs were reasonable and not high enough to discourage future civil-rights lawsuits. It disagreed that the case had broad public importance, stating that the issues were important to the plaintiffs but did not involve larger societal matters or questions of broad public significance.
The court also found that the legal questions were not particularly close. It stated that the plaintiffs’ due-process claims were foreclosed by Gonzales v. Raich and that the plaintiffs lacked evidence supporting their “class of one” equal-protection claims.
Finally, the court found that the plaintiffs’ declarations did not establish that they had limited financial resources or that paying the costs would be a hardship. The court noted their statements about money invested and lost because of the denied permit application and their statements that Borges had returned to work in real estate and Gurr had returned to work in information technology.
Disposition
The court overruled the plaintiffs’ objection and directed the Clerk to tax, or formally assess, the bill of costs at Docket No. 120.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.