Background
Sophia Wilansky brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Morton County, North Dakota, and several law-enforcement officials. After limited discovery, the district court entered judgment for the defendants, and the Eighth Circuit separately affirmed the merits rulings.
As prevailing parties, the defendants submitted bills of costs. The district court scrutinized the requested expenses, disallowed shipping, handling, delivery charges, and unexplained reporter expenses, but awarded more than $35,000 for other items. Wilansky appealed, principally arguing that many deposition and electronically stored information expenses were not authorized by 28 U.S.C. § 1920.
The Court’s Holding
The Eighth Circuit affirmed the cost award. It held that depositions may be taxable when reasonably necessary at the time they were taken, even if the case is ultimately resolved without trial. The court also concluded that § 1920 permits recovery for both printed transcripts and video recordings when each was necessarily obtained for use in the case. It upheld costs for condensed and additional transcript copies, multiple transcript formats, court-reporter overtime, and a transcript from a related case.
The majority also upheld Morton County’s electronic-discovery costs on the record presented. It agreed that scanning documents and converting native files into readable formats may qualify as exemplification or making copies, and sustained costs directly related to cellphone extraction and preservation that the district court found analogous to those activities. Judge Kobes dissented from that portion, reasoning that § 1920(4) covers the actual creation of copies but not preparatory or ancillary work such as collecting, preserving, processing, indexing, searching, extracting, reviewing, or hosting electronic data.
Key Takeaways
- Whether a deposition was reasonably necessary is assessed when it was taken, not solely by whether it was later used at trial or cited in full.
- Section 1920 does not require a prevailing party to choose between the cost of a printed deposition transcript and the cost of a video recording when both were necessarily obtained for the case.
- The divided decision permits taxation of the challenged electronic-discovery costs on this record, although the dissent warned that the majority’s reading of “making copies” is too broad.
Why It Matters
The decision confirms substantial district-court discretion within the statutory categories for taxable costs and rejects categorical limits on several common deposition expenses. Prevailing parties in complex Eighth Circuit litigation may recover multiple formats and related services when they can show that the expenses were necessary rather than merely convenient.
The ruling is also significant for electronic discovery. The majority’s record-specific approval of cellphone extraction and preservation costs may support broader cost requests, while the dissent highlights an unresolved boundary between taxable copying and nontaxable work performed before or around the creation of copies.