Costs: Lower Court Properly Awarded Prevailing Plaintiff Expenses For Computer Illustrations And Correctly Failed To Apportion Certain Expenses Among Other Defendants Not Present At Trial

 

However, Remand Necessary to Determine if Lower Court Parsed Out Costs of Pretrial Transcripts.

     In Hellam v. Crane Co., Case Nos. A1380131/A139141 (1^st Dist., Div. 4 Apr. 16, 2014) (unpublished), plaintiff won a sizable asbestos verdict against defendant. The lower court then awarded prevailing plaintiff about $85,000 in routine costs out of a requested $101,000, mainly excluding $16,000 in costs for daily transcript fees. (This case illustrates how routine costs can be substantial in personal injury, strict liability cases where graphic evidence and experts are involved.) Defendant challenged three items of awarded costs on appeal; it did obtain a remand on one of the items.

     The first challenge was that the lower court should have allocated costs among the other defendants pursued by plaintiff, which defendants were no longer in the case (presumably because they settled out). The trial judge denied the allocation request, concerned that defendant was the only remaining party at trial and denying the requested costs would prejudice plaintiff. The appellate court affirmed because the lower court applied the correct “reasonably necessary” routine costs standard, criticizing in the process Heppler v. J.M. Peters Co., 73 Cal.App.4^th 1265 (1999) for making a different allocation decision without relying on the routine costs statutes (although alternatively finding Heppler distinguishable in nature).

     The second challenge was to the lower court’s award of “computer illustrations” in the form of pictorial blowups of the workplace and deposition transcript segments. The lower court’s rejection of this challenge was no abuse of discretion based on its conclusion that the illustrations were reasonably necessary in the case, not just helpful to the jury’s understanding of certain events.

     The third challenge was to the allowance of costs for pretrial transcripts. Because CCP § 1033.5(b)(5) does not allow for recovery of transcripts not ordered by the court, a remand was in order because the reviewing court could not determine if the lower court had taxed these particular transcript expenses.