Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/586/17-1625/
Timestamp: 2019-08-17 20:38:30
Document Index: 657430523

Matched Legal Cases: ['§505', '§1821', '§1821', '§1821', '§505', '§505', '§1821', '§505', '§1821', '§505', '§1821', '§1821', '§1821', '§1821', '§505', '§1821', '§1821', '§1821', '§1821', '§1821', '§505', '§505', '§1821', '§1920', '§1821']

Rimini Street, Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc. :: 586 U.S. ___ (2019) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 586 › Rimini Street, Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc.
A jury awarded Oracle damages after finding that Rimini had infringed Oracle copyrights. The court awarded Oracle fees and costs, including $12.8 million for litigation expenses such as expert witnesses, e-discovery, and jury consulting. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, acknowledging that the award covered expenses not included within the six categories of costs identified in 28 U.S.C. 1821 and 1920, and citing the Copyright Act, which gives district courts discretion to award “full costs” to a party in copyright litigation, 17 U.S.C. 505. A unanimous Supreme Court reversed in part. The term “full costs” in the Copyright Act means costs specified in the general costs statute (sections 1821 and 1920), which defines what the term “costs” encompasses in subject-specific federal statutes such as section 505. Courts may not award litigation expenses that are not specified in sections 1821 and 1920 absent explicit authority. The Copyright Act does not explicitly authorize the award of litigation expenses beyond the six categories; the six categories do not authorize an award for expenses such as expert witness fees, e-discovery expenses, and jury consultant fees. Oracle has not shown that the phrase “full costs” had an established legal meaning that covered more than the full amount of the costs listed in the applicable costs schedule.
The term “full costs” in the Copyright Act (section 505) means costs specified in the general costs statute (28 U.S.C. 1821 and 1920), which defines what the term “costs” encompasses in subject-specific federal statutes such as section 505.
(a) Sections 1821 and 1920 define what the term “costs” encompasses in subject-specific federal statutes such as §505. Congress may authorize awards of expenses beyond the six categories specified in the general costs statute, but courts may not award litigation expenses that are not specified in §§1821 and 1920 absent explicit authority. This Court’s precedents have consistently adhered to that approach. See Crawford Fitting Co. v. J. T. Gibbons, Inc., 482 U.S. 437; West Virginia Univ. Hospitals, Inc. v. Casey, 499 U.S. 83; Arlington Central School Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Murphy, 548 U.S. 291. The Copyright Act does not explicitly authorize the award of litigation expenses beyond the six categories specified in §§1821 and 1920, which do not authorize an award for expenses such as expert witness fees, e-discovery expenses, and jury consultant fees. Pp. 3–6.
Third, Oracle advances a variety of surplusage arguments. According to Oracle, after Congress made the costs award discretionary in 1976, district courts could award any amount of costs up to 100 percent, and so Rimini’s reading of the word “full” now adds nothing to “costs.” Because Congress would not have intended “full” to be surplusage, Oracle contends, Congress must have employed the term “full” to mean expenses beyond the costs specified in §§1821 and 1920. But even if the term “full” lacked any continuing significance after 1976, the meaning of “costs” did not change. Oracle’s interpretation would also create its own redundancy problem by rendering the second sentence of §505—which covers attorney’s fees—largely redundant because §505’s first sentence presumably would already cover those fees. Finally, Oracle’s argument, even if correct, overstates the significance of statutory surplusage and redundancy. See, e.g., Marx v. General Revenue Corp., 568 U.S. 371, 385. Pp. 6–11.
879 F.3d 948, reversed in part and remanded.
That $12.8 million award is the subject of the dispute in this case. As relevant here, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s $12.8 million award. The Court of Appeals recognized that the general federal statute authorizing district courts to award costs, 28 U. S. C. §§1821 and 1920, lists only six categories of costs that may be awarded against the losing party. And the Court of Appeals acknowledged that the $12.8 million award covered expenses not included within those six categories. But the Court of Appeals, relying on Circuit precedent, held that the District Court’s $12.8 million award for additional expenses was still appropriate because §505 permits the award of “full costs,” a term that the Ninth Circuit said was not confined to the six categories identified in §§1821 and 1920. 879 F.3d 948, 965−966 (2018).
We granted certiorari to resolve disagreement in the Courts of Appeals over whether the term “full costs” in §505 authorizes awards of expenses other than those costs identified in §§1821 and 1920. 585 U. S. ___ (2018). Compare 879 F. 3d, at 965–966; Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. v. Entertainment Distributing, 429 F.3d 869 (CA9 2005), with Artisan Contractors Assn. of Am., Inc. v. Frontier Ins. Co., 275 F.3d 1038 (CA11 2001); Pinkham v. Camex, Inc., 84 F.3d 292 (CA8 1996).
In the general “costs” statute, codified at §§1821 and 1920 of Title 28, Congress has specified six categories of litigation expenses that a federal court may award as “costs,”[1] and Congress has detailed how to calculate the amount of certain costs. Sections 1821 and 1920 in essence define what the term “costs” encompasses in the subject-specific federal statutes that provide for an award of costs.
Sections 1821 and 1920 create a default rule and establish a clear baseline against which Congress may legislate. Consistent with that default rule, some federal statutes simply refer to “costs.” In those cases, federal courts are limited to awarding the costs specified in §§1821 and 1920. If, for particular kinds of cases, Congress wants to authorize awards of expenses beyond the six categories specified in the general costs statute, Congress may do so. For example, some federal statutes go beyond §§1821 and 1920 to expressly provide for the award of expert witness fees or attorney’s fees. See West Virginia Univ. Hospitals, Inc. v. Casey, 499 U.S. 83, 89, n. 4 (1991). Indeed, the Copyright Act expressly provides for awards of attorney’s fees as well as costs. 17 U. S. C. §505. And the same Congress that enacted amendments to the Copyright Act in 1976 enacted several other statutes that expressly authorized awards of expert witness fees. See Casey, 499 U. S., at 88. But absent such express authority, courts may not award litigation expenses that are not specified in §§1821 and 1920.
In Crawford Fitting Co. v. J. T. Gibbons, Inc., the question was whether courts could award expert witness fees under Rule 54(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 54(d) authorizes an award of “costs” but does not expressly refer to expert witness fees. 482 U.S. 437, 441 (1987). In defining what expenses qualify as “costs,” §§1821 and 1920 likewise do not include expert witness fees. We therefore held that the prevailing party could not obtain expert witness fees: When “a prevailing party seeks reimbursement for fees paid to its own expert witnesses, a federal court is bound by the limit of §1821(b), absent contract or explicit statutory authority to the contrary.” Id., at 439.
In Arlington Central School Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Murphy, we considered the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which authorized an award of costs. The question was whether that Act’s reference to “costs” encompassed expert witness fees. We again explained that “costs” is “ ‘a term of art that generally does not include expert fees.’ ” 548 U.S. 291, 297 (2006); see also Taniguchi v. Kan Pa- cific Saipan, Ltd., 566 U.S. 560, 573 (2012). We stated: “[N]o statute will be construed as authorizing the taxation of witness fees as costs unless the statute ‘refer[s] explic- itly to witness fees.’ ” Murphy, 548 U. S., at 301 (quoting Crawford Fitting, 482 U. S., at 445).
Some general background: From 1789 to 1853, federal courts awarded costs and fees according to the relevant state law of the forum State. See Crawford Fitting, 482 U. S., at 439−440; Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 247−250 (1975). In 1853, Congress departed from that state-focused approach. That year, Congress passed and President Fillmore signed a comprehensive federal statute establishing a federal schedule for the award of costs in federal court. Crawford Fitting, 482 U. S., at 440; 10Stat. 161. Known as the Fee Act of 1853, that 1853 statute has “carried forward to today” in §§1821 and 1920 “ ‘without any apparent intent to change the controlling rules.’ ” Crawford Fitting, 482 U. S., at 440. As we have said, §§1821 and 1920 provide a comprehensive schedule of costs for proceedings in federal court.
In any event, Oracle’s historical argument fails even on its own terms. Oracle has not persuasively demonstrated that as of 1831, the phrase “full costs” had an established meaning in English or American law that covered more than the full amount of the costs listed in the applicable costs schedule. On the contrary, the federal courts as of 1831 awarded costs in accord with the costs schedule of the relevant state law. See id., at 439−440; Alyeska Pipeline, 421 U. S., at 250. And state laws at the time tended to use the term “full costs” to refer to, among other things, full cost awards as distinguished from the half, double, or treble cost awards that were also commonly available under state law at the time.[2] That usage accorded with the ordinary meaning of the term. At the time, the word “full” conveyed the same meaning that it does today: “Complete; entire; not defective or partial.” 1 N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language 89 (1828); see also 1 S. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language 817 (1773) (“Complete, such as that nothing further is desired or wanted; Complete without abatement; at the utmost degree”). Full costs did not encompass expenses beyond those costs that otherwise could be awarded under the applicable state law.
The case law since 1831 also refutes Oracle’s historical argument. If Oracle’s account of the history were correct, federal courts starting in 1831 presumably would have interpreted the term “full costs” in the Copyright Act to allow awards of litigation expenses that were not ordinarily available as costs under the applicable costs schedule. But Rimini points out that none of the more than 800 available copyright decisions awarding costs from 1831 to 1976—that is, from the year the term “full costs” first appeared in the Copyright Act until the year that the Act was last significantly amended—awarded expenses other than those specified by the applicable state or federal law. Tr. of Oral Arg. 7. Oracle has not refuted Rimini’s argument on that point. Oracle cites no §505 cases where federal courts awarded expert witness fees or other litigation expenses of the kind at issue here until the Ninth Circuit’s 2005 decision adopting the interpretation of §505 that the Ninth Circuit followed in this case. See Twentieth Century Fox, 429 F.3d 869.
To begin with, even if the term “full” lacked any continuing significance after 1976, the meaning of “costs” did not change. The term “costs” still means those costs specified in §§1821 and 1920. It makes little sense to think that Congress in 1976, when it made the award of full costs discretionary rather than mandatory, silently expanded the kinds of expenses that a court may otherwise award as costs in copyright suits.[3]
Finally, even if Oracle is correct that the term “full” has become unnecessary or redundant as a result of the 1976 amendment, Oracle overstates the significance of statutory surplusage or redundancy. Redundancy is not a silver bullet. We have recognized that some “redundancy is ‘hardly unusual’ in statutes addressing costs.” Marx v. General Revenue Corp., 568 U.S. 371, 385 (2013). If one possible interpretation of a statute would cause some redundancy and another interpretation would avoid redundancy, that difference in the two interpretations can supply a clue as to the better interpretation of a statute. But only a clue. Sometimes the better overall reading of the statute contains some redundancy.
1 The six categories that a federal court may award as costs are: “(1) Fees of the clerk and marshal; “(2) Fees for printed or electronically recorded transcripts necessarily obtained for use in the case; “(3) Fees and disbursements for printing and witnesses; “(4) Fees for exemplification and the costs of making copies of any materials where the copies are necessarily obtained for use in the case; “(5) Docket fees under section 1923 of this title; “(6) Compensation of court appointed experts, compensation of interpreters, and salaries, fees, expenses, and costs of special interpretation services under section 1828 of this title.” 28 U. S. C. §1920. In addition, §1821 provides particular reimbursement rates for witnesses’ “[p]er diem and mileage” expenses.
Oracle USA v. Rimini Street, No. 16-16832 (9th Cir. Jan. 08, 2018)
Rimini Street, Inc., et al.