$150,449.49 Was Costs Award To The Successful Defendant.
Litigators at both the federal and state levels are fully aware of the expense which has been added to litigation based on having to produce electronically documents/information in cases (also known as “ESI”). The next opinion demonstrates that ESI expenses can be recouped by a successful party as being “reasonable and necessary” to the litigation under the discretionary costs provision contained in CCP § 1033.5(c).
In Dremak v. Urban Outfitters, Inc., Case No. D071308 (4th Dist., Div. 1 Mar. 23, 2018) (unpublished), three plaintiff consumers, on behalf of a certified class, lost a consumer ZIP code sales information case against Urban Outfitters, with the trial judge awarding the defense $150,449.49 in defense costs—a lot of which were associated with expenses incurred to produce electronically stored documents in response to plaintiffs’ discovery requests.
The 4/1 DCA found this award was no abuse of discretion. Given that activities associated with e-discovery analytics and database searches are “reasonable and necessary” to the conduct of the litigation under CCP § 1033.5(c), the defense correctly was allowed to recoup these costs against the unsuccessful plaintiffs.