Federal Court Also Taxes Costs for e-Discovery
Federal Court in Colorado Placed Great Weight on Plaintiff’s Refusal to Coordinate with the Defendant to Limit Scope for Request of ESI.
Overview: In this case that was dismissed on qualified immunity grounds and lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the taxable costs were $58,000 if the costs of ESI discovery were included versus $2,400 if they were not. The court noted that the plaintiff had demanded extensive discovery and had refused to limit its requests, despite defendant having written to plaintiff three times describing the difficulties and complexities its third-party vendor was having in retrieving and restoring ESI to produce documents responsive to the discovery requests. In taxing the full cost of the vendor’s ESI discovery process, the court seemed to place great weight on the plaintiff’s refusal to coordinate with the defendant to limit the scope of their request for information or take other measures to limit the costs of the endeavor. Comprehensive Addiction Treatment Ctr., Inc. v. Leslea, No. 11-CV-03417-CMA-MJW, 2015 WL 638198 (D. Colo. Feb. 13, 2015). Plaintiff immediately filed an appeal with the Tenth Circuit.
