United States Fire Insurance Company v. Icicle Seafoods Inc, 2:20-cv-00401

Plaintiffs (United States Fire Insurance and co-insurers) were awarded $27,709.23 in costs by the Clerk; Defendants (Icicle Seafoods et al.) moved to retax those costs.
Defendants challenged $26,434.77 taxed under 28 U.S.C. § 1920(4), focusing on $22,911.37 billed as "EDD: Native ESI Processing" by vendor Empire Discovery.
Vendor invoices and declarations described services as deduplication, full metadata extraction, OCR/TIFF-to-searchable-PDF conversion, and processing ESI for review on the Relativity platform; vendor said charges did not include attorney review or hosting fees.
Defendants argued (citing In re Online DVD‑Rental) that costs incurred to process documents for counsel’s review/culling (i.e., selection for production) are not taxable under § 1920(4).
Plaintiffs (Insurers) argued the ESI processing costs are taxable as copying/exemplification under § 1920(4) and that review functionality was incidental to the processing services.
The Court reviewed the motion de novo, found Plaintiffs failed to show the challenged ESI processing costs were for documents actually produced or received in discovery, and reduced the Clerk’s taxation by $22,911.37, leaving costs taxed at $3,186.06 (Order dated Aug. 25, 2022).

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether ESI processing charges (deduplication, metadata extraction, conversion/OCR) are taxable under 28 U.S.C. § 1920(4)	Costs are taxable as fees for exemplification/copies; processing was necessary and incidental to producing searchable copies	Processing primarily enabled counsel review/culling; costs for selection/review of documents not produced are not taxable	Denied as to the challenged $22,911.37: Plaintiffs did not show these charges were for documents produced/received in discovery, so those costs were retaxed away
Whether vendor declarations/invoices provided sufficient specificity tying processing costs to produced/received documents	Vendor descriptions and supplemental declaration were sufficient to show copy-related services	Declarations insufficiently tied charges to documents actually produced; descriptions suggested costs facilitated review for responsiveness/privilege	Held for Defendants: specificity inadequate to establish all challenged costs were taxable under § 1920(4)

In re Online DVD-Rental Antitrust Litig., 779 F.3d 914 (9th Cir. 2015) (limits taxable § 1920(4) costs to those associated with documents produced or received in discovery; processing for selection is not taxable)
Save Our Valley v. Sound Transit, 335 F.3d 932 (9th Cir. 2003) (Rule 54 creates a presumption in favor of awarding costs to the prevailing party; losing party must show why costs should not be awarded)
Haagen-Dazs Co. v. Double Rainbow Gourmet Ice Creams, 920 F.2d 587 (9th Cir. 1990) (§ 1920(4) does not require that the copied document be introduced into the record to be taxable)
Lahrichi v. Lumera Corp., [citation="433 F. App'x 519"] (9th Cir. 2011) (district court reviews motions to retax costs de novo)