Nothing says Merry Christmas like winning eDiscovery costs. One party was able to get over half the gifts on their Christmas List from the Court as taxable costs.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Defendants submitted eDiscovery costs over $40,000, which was nearly two-thirds of the Defendant\u2019s bill of costs. A service provider made up over half of the eDiscovery costs with a bill of $22,706.90. The rest of the bill was from internal eDiscovery costs. Moore v. Weinstein Co. Llc,<\/i> 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178738, 9-10 (M.D. Tenn. Dec. 18, 2012).<\/p>\n

Like any Christmas List, the Court found some items to be unreasonable. However, the Court found the service provider\u2019s costs of $22,706.90 to be \u201creasonable and necessary.\u201d Moore,<\/i> at *8.<\/p>\n

The Case Management Order required production as single-page TIFF\u2019s with Summation DII and LFP load files. Id.<\/i> The Court stated that the CMO required the processing costs to be incurred by each party. Id. <\/i>The Court also found that \u201cprocessing…document[s] for production by, for example, searching for specific custodians, is also a necessary cost of this litigation.\u201d Id.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Court found that the in-house charges at $150 an hour were \u201cunreasonable.\u201d The Court noted that the service provider hourly rate was $175, \u201cwhich would presumably be significantly higher than the rates billed\u201d to the Defendant. Moore,<\/i> at *8-9.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Court found the following:<\/p>\n

The Magistrate Judge believes that a rate comparable to an experienced paralegal would be more appropriate. The technology services technologists have specialized expertise and training similar to a paralegal. Therefore, the Magistrate Judge will set a more reasonable billing rate of $100\/hour for Technology Services billing.<\/i><\/p>\n

Moore,<\/i> at *9.<\/p>\n

The Court found several time entries unnecessary, including:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Work on discovery budget;<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Preparation of deposition transcripts for review;<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Preparation of documents for hearing; and<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Prepare for and attend telephonic deposition of IT vendor<\/i><\/p>\n

The Court found that the above totaled 134.9 billable hours at the Court-reduced rate hourly rate of $100 for a total of $13,490.00.\u00a0Moore,<\/i> at *9.<\/p>\n

Based on the reduction of $13,490.00, the new total taxable costs for eDiscovery were $36,196.90. Moore,<\/i> at *9-10.<\/p>\n

Bow Tie Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n

No child ever gets EVERYTHING they want for Christmas. However, the Defendant in this case got a lot in their taxable costs, even if it was at a reduced rate.<\/p>\n

In determining eDiscovery costs, it is important to understand what work is actually being done when a Court discusses “processing.” Processing is defined by the Sedona Conference as follows:<\/p>\n

Processing Data: An automated computer workflow where native data is ingested by any number of software programs designed to extract text and selected metadata and then normalize the data for packaging into a format for the eventual loading into a review platform.<\/em><\/p>\n

May also entail identification of duplicates\/deduplication and rendering of data into delimited format.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Sedona Conference Glossary, September 2010<\/p>\n

eDiscovery specialists who perform advanced searches, processing, data reduction, recommend technology to use on a case are truly well-educated professionals. It was very good to see a Court recognize their abilities in awarding costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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