And speaking of discovery, reader W.C. writes to say:
This is a False Claims Act case. I am not terribly interested in the substance (relators claim that a drug was recommended for off-label use and that Medicaid shouldn’t have paid for it; they complained and were fired).
What is interesting is taxable costs. Fifth Circuit affirmed (finding no abuse of discretion for an award of) $232,809.92.
Money quotes for me: “The district court acknowledged that [Defendant]’s invoices were not detailed but explained that, given nearly three million pages of copies [Defendant] produced for its defense in this case, it would have been impossible for [Defendant] to explain each page’s usefulness.” (emphasis added). The Court also allowed for “costs relating to (1) TIFF image conversion, (2) scanning, (3) formatting electronic documents, and (4) PDF conversion – per [28 U.S.C.] § 1920(4), which allows recovery for ‘exemplification’ and ‘making copies’ of case materials,” and confirmed that the district “allow[s] a prevailing party to recover the costs of complying with an opposing party’s request to reformat electronic documents or scan hard copies of documents” under 28 USDC s 1920.
Lessons: (i) You might want to more narrowly tailor those discovery request; (ii) Defendants had asked for $961,380.52, so maybe the back up the truck strategy was not 100% effective.
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