Law Commons^™

The Award Of E-Discovery Costs To The Prevailing Party: An Analog Solution In A Digital World, Steven Baicker-Mckee

Cleveland State Law Review

Against this backdrop of the spiraling cost and burden of the discovery process, an issue is percolating through the lower and intermediate courts—the recoverability of e-discovery expenses as a component of the costs awarded to the successful party under Rule 54(d). Two divergent approaches have emerged in the judicial opinions and in the limited scholarship addressing the application of Rule 54(d) to e-discovery costs. The first contingent contends that Rule 54(d) is only intended to reimburse the prevailing party for a small subset of the total costs that the party has incurred. These jurists and scholars reason that Congressional intent …