Thе district court correctly decided that Saudi Arabian law applies in a suit for personal injuries sustained on an oil plat
I.
Fluor Corporation is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in California. Among its more than 300 subsidiaries is Fluor Engineers, Inc., later renamed Fluor Daniel, Inc., which is incorporated and has its principal place of business in California. Fluor Daniel owned 70% of Fluor Arabia, Limited, a Saudi Arabian corporаtion with its principal place of business in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The remaining 30% of Fluor Arabia’s shares were owned by E.A. Juffali & Bros., a Saudi Arabian general partnership. Fluor Arabia is authorized to do business only in Saudi Arabia.
Vernon I. Fogleman, a Louisiana resident, began to work for Fluor Arabia in Saudi Arabia as a construction and electrical supervisor in May 1976. To apply for his job, Fogleman had completed a “Foreign Employment Application” obtained in Louisiana from a neighbor’s son on leave from another company in Saudi Arabia. After the neighbor’s son had returned to Saudi Arabia, Fogleman mailed the application to him. A few weeks later, Fogleman received a telephone call from Irvine, California, advising him of a job opening in Saudi Arabia. He therefore proceeded to Saudi Arabia, where, after signing a contract, he worked for Fluor Arabia until 1984 under a series of eight one-year contracts, all signed in Saudi Arabia. The contracts provided that Fogleman had been hired to work exclusively in Saudi Arabia. They contained no choice-of-law provision, but did provide that employee benefits for work-related injuries would be computed on the basis of the California Worker’s Compensation Act.
For three years Fogleman worked directly for Fluor Arabia on construction projects for the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO). During the following five years, Fluor Arabia assigned Fogleman to work with ARAMCO as an electrical and construction supervisor pursuant to a “Supplementary Manpower Contract” between the two companies. His final assignment, beginning in June 1983, was to supervise the electrification of an ARAMCO оil platform in the Berri Field, off the coast of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. During the course of this work Fogleman ate, slept, and maintained an office aboard the workboat M/V AL JUBAIL I. Beginning in August 1983, ARAMCO required Fogleman to work 84 hours per week because the project was behind schedule. On January 24, 1984, while using a swing rope to transfer from the platform to the work-boat AL MOJIL VIII, Fogleman sustained a sharp pain in his chest. He was taken to thе Abdulla Fouad Hospital for medical treatment, where, upon completion of a stress test, he suffered a heart attack. He was then evacuated on an ARAMCO charter plane to Houston, Texas, where he underwent triple bypass surgery.
Invoking the Jones Act
II.
We review de novo a district court’s choice-of-law determination.
1) Place of the Wrongful Act
The place of the wrongful act is accorded little weight in traditional maritime cases, in which the locality of the ship changes constantly.
2) Law of the Flag
The law of the flag has traditionally been of cardinal importance in determining the law applicable to maritime cases.
3) Allegiance or Domicile of the Injured
At all relevant times, Fogleman was domiciled in the United States.
It) Allegiance of the Defendant Shipowner
Both the AL JUBAIL I and the AL MO-JIL VIII are owned by the Al-Mojil Establishment of Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Since this is nоt a traditional shipping case, how
5) Place of Contract
The place of the contract, of little import due to its “fortuitous” occurrence for the traditional seaman,
6) Inaccessibility of the Foreign Forum
As the Supreme Court noted in Lauritzen, this factor is relevant only to a forum non conveniens determination, not to a choice-of-law analysis.
7) Law of the Forum
In Lauritzen, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that an American forum should simply apply its own law to a maritime tort, since this would in effect reduce the choice-of-law determination to no more than a personal jurisdiction inquiry.
Nor is the law of the forum automatically “inapplicable when [the] defendant was involuntarily made a party,”
The Foglemans brought their suit in federal district court. Whatever weight the law-of-the-forum factor has, therefore, tells on the side of the application of United States law.
8)Base of Operations
In Rhoditis, the Supreme Court determined United States law to be applicable to a suit by an alien seaman against an alien corporation for injury sustained on а foreign ship, because the corporate shipowner maintained “substantial and continuing contacts”
The Foglemans contend that, if one looks behind the corporate facade of Fluor Arabia and ARAMCO, the base of operations of both companies is in the United States; both companies maintain substantial and continuing contacts with the United States through their corporate parents; and United States law is therefore applicаble to this case. This court has, however, uniformly held that to determine a vessel’s base of operations for choice of law purposes, we look to the location from which its day-to-day operations are controlled.
Analysis of the facts of this case according to the Lauritzen-Rhoditis test demonstrates that the only significant factor pointing to the application of United States law is the domicile of the plaintiff. We have previously held that the allegiance of a plaintiff, even when recruited in the United States, does not mandate the application of United States law in a maritime suit when all the other factors indicate the application of foreign law.
The Foglemans also contend that the remedy available to them under Saudi Arabian law is inadequate on its face and that the application of United States law to this suit is therefore required. The fact that the law of another forum may be more or less favorable to a plaintiff, however, does not determine choice of law.
We conclude that the district court correctly applied the Lauritzen-Rhoditis test and that the law of Saudi Arabia governs this suit. We do not address the Fogle-mans’ contention that the district court should have held that Fluor Arabia was properly served because: 1) the parties have stipulated that applying Saudi Arabian law disposes of all claims arising from Fogleman’s injury, so that even if Fluor Arabia were still a party, this would disрose of any delictual claims against it; and 2) Fogleman has not asserted any contrac
III.
The Foglemans contend that ARAMCO’s bill of costs is excessive. We will reverse the district court’s award of costs only on a clear showing of abuse of discretion.
In the present case, we must correct an obvious discrepanсy between the award made by the district court and the requested reimbursement. The district court taxed the Foglemans $5,765.62 in costs. ARAMCO, however, originally requested only $5,165.62; subsequently, in its response to the plaintiffs’ memorandum in opposition, ARAMCO reduced its request to $4,924.32. ARAMCO does not contest a reduction of the district court’s award of costs to its requested amount. We therefore find that the award of costs to ARAMCO should be reduced by $841.30, to reflect the difference between the amount actually requested and that awarded.
The Foglemans challenge the inclusion of charges relating to the deposition of Vernon Fogleman in ARAMCO’s bill of costs, asserting that ARAMCO used the deposition only in its brief to support its motion for summary judgment on the issue of Fogleman’s status as a Jones Act seaman. Since the district court denied this motion, the Foglemans contend that ARAMCO was not the prevailing party in regard to the costs incurred in taking Fogle-man’s deposition. This argument is without merit. The case must be viewed as a whole to determine who was the “prevailing party”; a party need not prevail on every issue in order to be entitled to costs.
The Foglemans also contend that the costs incurred by ARAMCO in taking the deposition of Ms. Fogleman, and in copying the depositions of the Foglemаns and of Dr. Jorge Garcia, should have been disallowed. This court has previously held that prevailing parties are entitled to recover the costs of original depositions and copies under 28 U.S.C. § 1920(2) and § 1920(4) respectively,
ARAMCO offers no explanation, howеver, why it was necessary to obtain a copy of Fogleman’s deposition at a “semi-expedited” rate. We have previously held that the extra cost of obtaining a trial transcript on an expedited basis is not taxable unless prior court approval of expedition has been obtained or the special character of the litigation necessitates expedited receipt of the transcript.
Lastly, the Foglemans contend that ARAMCO’s bill of $2,419.12 for reproduction costs is excessive. The cost of cоpying other documents is subject to the same standard as that of copying depositions; reproductions necessarily obtained for use in the case are included within taxable costs,
ARAMCO’s counsel charged 20 cents per copy for duplications of documents made in house. The Foglemans contend that they should be taxed only for the actual cost of reproduction. To the extent that counsel charges a party more than actual cost for any service, be it reproduction of documents or telephone calls, counsel is recovering additional fees. In Wolfe v. Wolfe,
To summarize, we affirm the award by the district court of costs for the originals and copies of depositions of the Foglemans and Dr. Jorge Garcia. We remand for reduction of costs by $841.30 to the amount actually requested by ARAMCO, for reduction of Vernon Fogleman’s deposition charges to the non-expedited rate, for reconsideration of in-house copying charges, and for determination of the extent to which ARAMCO’s general reproduction costs were necessarily incurred for use in the case.
The district court’s decision that the Labor Law of Saudi Arabia governs this case is AFFIRMED. The district court’s award of costs to ARAMCO is REMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Notes
. 46 U.S.C. § 688 (1988).
. Quintero v. Klaveness Ship Lines,
.
.
. Lauritzen,
. Rhoditis,
. Chiazor v. Transworld Drilling Co.,
. Lauritzen,
. Chiazor,
. Lauritzen,
. See Randall v. Arabian American Oil Co.,
. Lauritzen,
. Chiazor,
. Lauritzen,
. Id. at 590-91,
. Id.
. Schexnider,
. Diaz v. Humboldt,
. Nunez-Lozano v. Rederi,
. Diaz,
.
. Id.
. Id.
. Quintero,
. Bailey,
. Vaz Borralho,
. See id.
. Schexnider,
. Piper Aircraft Co. v. Reyno,
. Randall,
. Sidag Aktiengesellschaft v. Smoked Foods Prods. Co.,
. Studiengesellschaft Kohle mbH v. Eastman Kodak Co.,
. 28 U.S.C. § 1920 reads as follows:
A judge or clerk of any court of the United States may tax as costs the following:
... (2) Fees of the court reporter for all or any part of the stenographic transcript necessarily obtained for use in the case;
... (4) Fees for exemplification and copies of papers necessarily obtained for use in the case
. United States v. Kolesar,
. E.g., Todd Shipyards Corp. v. Turbine Service, Inc.,
. West Wind Africa,
. Studiengesellschaft,
. Allen,
. Newman v. A.E. Staley Mfg. Co.,
. J.T. Gibbons, Inc. v. Crawford Fitting Co.,
. Nissho-Iwai,
. American Key Corp. v. Cumberland Associates,
.
. Id. at 828.
