GEICO prevailed in a first-party bad faith case in Florida. Then came GEICO's request for costs as the prevailing party. Prevail? Not so much when it came to costs, it seems.
GEICO asked for its insured to pay two kinds of its litigation costs. One was for copies made in-house, and the other was for copies made for GEICO by third-party vendors. The total, by my calculations: $7,159.56.
GEICO did not get the $7,159.56 in costs it asked for in this bad faith case, even though it was the prevailing party on the bad faith claim. Instead, a United States Magistrate Judge recommended that GEICO's costs claim be reduced by some $5,000.00, or to $2,316.76. The U.S. District Judge approved, confirmed, and adopted this recommendation. Strong v. GEICO Gen. Ins. Co., No.: 8:16-cv-1757-T-36AAS, 2018 WL 671342 (M.D. Fla. January 10, 2018) (Sansone, USMJ), opinion adopted, confirmed and approved by United States District Judge, 2018 WL 647457 (M.D. Fla. January 31, 2018) (Honeywell, USDJ).
Why? Well, first, there apparently was a real problem regarding all of the claimed copying costs. According to the policyholder, the whole case was "virtually paperless." Virtually all of the discovery was electronic and both parties' printed papers in evidence filled only one binder.
With this background, GEICO's submission was actually redacted as to the copies allegedly made in-house.
The Court said that it simply could not determine "whether the copies were necessarily obtained for use in the case or simply for GEICO’s convenience." As the party requesting a costs award, the Court pointed out that it was GEICO's "burden to prove that it is entitled to recover each cost and expense it seeks."
In the Court's eyes, GEICO simply had not met this burden by first redacting the costs and then requesting those costs here: "More support is necessary to award GEICO its costs for copying 10,582 documents in a case that, according to Ms. Strong, was paperless."
Although GEICO did not redact its costs for third-party copying, in the Court's eyes GEICO failed to adequately support this costs request, too.
As noted, the U.S. Magistrate Judge in this case recommended a reduction of some $5,000.00 in GEICO's requested costs. The U.S. District Judge in this case agreed. GEICO's $7,159.56 costs request was reduced to $2,316.76.
The wages of redaction are not reimbursed, you might say is the lesson from this case.
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