Opinion ID: 528427
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Motion to Retax Costs

Text: 30 Following the district court's grant of involuntary dismissal, defendants filed a Notice of Application for Costs together with a Bill of Costs, requesting $160,584.74 for costs expended in defense of the lawsuit, including $146,926.94 in expert witness fees, $5000 for duplication and exemplification and $8,657.80 for depositions. Without agreeing as to entitlement, the parties stipulated to the amount of costs taxable for exemplification and copies of papers ($3000) and for deposition transcripts ($6,837.10), totaling $9,837.10. The clerk awarded costs to defendants in that amount. Defendants then moved to retax to add $146,926.94 in expert witness fees, expended for research and analyses by Pomona's five expert witnesses. 17 Plaintiffs filed a cross-motion to retax, seeking to eliminate all costs. Both motions were denied by the district court. Because only defendants appeal, the sole issue we must consider is whether defendants were entitled to $146,926.94 in expert witness fees as taxable costs under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1920 (1982). 31 Defendants argue that recoverable exemplification costs under section 1920(4) include not merely the cost of physical preparation of exhibits, but the expert research expenses incurred in assembling and preparing the content of those exhibits. Defendants maintain that the fees paid to the experts who assembled, analyzed and distilled the data incorporated into their trial exhibits are an integral part of the costs of exemplification and therefore should be recoverable under section 1920(4). 32 While we have never considered the issue, some other circuits have limited recovery under section 1920(4) to the actual costs of physically producing the exhibits. In Webster v. M/V Moolchand, Sethia Liners, Ltd., 730 F.2d 1035 (5th Cir.1984), the Fifth Circuit held that the language of [Sec. 1920(4) ] seems to preclude its extension beyond the payment of the actual cost of exemplification and reproduction of copies. Id. at 1040. Similarly, in CleveRock Energy Corp. v. Trepel, 609 F.2d 1358 (10th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 909, 100 S.Ct. 1836, 64 L.Ed.2d 261 (1980), the Tenth Circuit denied expert witness fees as adjunct to the preparation of exhibits. Id. at 1363; accord Union Carbide & Carbon Corp. v. Nisley, 300 F.2d 561 (10th Cir.1961) (under Rule 54(d), accountant's fees incurred in connection with trial preparation in antitrust litigation not allowable), cert. dismissed sub. nom. Wade v. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., 371 U.S. 801, 83 S.Ct. 13, 9 L.Ed.2d 46 (1962). 33 Defendants cite contrary authority from two other circuits. In EEOC v. Kenosha Unified School Dist., 620 F.2d 1220 (7th Cir.1980), the Seventh Circuit held that the district court may use equity power to allow recovery of costs beyond the mere physical production of court materials. Id. at 1228. Kenosha, which relied on the district court's equitable powers, has been fatally undermined by the Supreme Court's recent decision in Crawford Fitting Co. v. J.T. Gibbons, Inc., 482 U.S. 437, 107 S.Ct. 2494, 96 L.Ed.2d 385 (1987). Crawford held that, notwithstanding the district court's discretionary authority under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 54(d) to refuse to tax costs in favor of a prevailing party, a district court may not rely on its equity power to tax costs beyond those expressly authorized by section 1920: The discretion granted by Rule 54(d) is not a power to evade this specific congressional command. Rather, it is solely a power to decline to tax, as costs, the items enumerated in Sec. 1920. Id. at 442, 107 S.Ct. at 2498; see also Maxwell v. Hapag-Lloyd Aktiengesellschaft, 862 F.2d 767, 770 (9th Cir.1988) (Crawford strictly limits reimbursable costs to those enumerated in section 1920). 34 Defendants also rely on In re Air Crash Disaster, 687 F.2d 626 (2d Cir.1982), where the Second Circuit construed section 1920(4) to allow recovery of the expense of an expert's research and analysis in ... producing an exhibit. Id. at 631. We must part company with our sister circuit on this issue because we believe it has read section 1920 too broadly. Section 1920(4) speaks narrowly of [f]ees for exemplification and copies of papers, suggesting that fees are permitted only for the physical preparation and duplication of documents, not the intellectual effort involved in their production. Were the term exemplification read any broader, it could well swallow up other statutory provisions of the Code and rules, such as the prohibition against the award of attorney's fees or expert witness fees in the normal case. See, e.g., 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1821(b) (1982) (limiting court-ordered award of witness fees to thirty dollars per day); 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1927 (1982) (attorney's fees may be awarded where attorney acted recklessly or in bad faith); Fed.R.Civ.P. 11 (allowing award of attorney's fees incurred in defense of bad faith motion or pleading); Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(4)(C) (party seeking discovery may, under certain circumstances, be required to pay expert witness fees for time and effort expended in responding to discovery requests). See CleveRock, 609 F.2d at 1363. This is because any document necessarily produced for purposes of the litigation will contain somebody's intellectual input, be it a lawyer, an expert witness or a lay witness. 35 This case illustrates the problem with defendants' proposed construction. Defendants are asking the court to shift their expert witness costs to plaintiffs under the guise of exemplification costs. Reading section 1920(4) in pari materia with other applicable provisions precludes this result. We therefore affirm the district court's denial of the motion to retax costs.