Appellate Panel Found No Prejudice For Premature Costs Memorandum Filing and Affirms Most Awarded Costs To The Defense.
Doe v. Santa Cruz-Monterey-Merced Managed Medical Care, Case No. H051821 (6th Dist. Apr. 17, 2025) (unpublished) is a situation where a defendant obtained summary judgment against plaintiff on a Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (Civ. Code, §56) claim. Defendant filed a costs memorandum for recovery of routine costs, which the lower court granted after taxing certain costs such that the ultimate award was $19,065.72.
Plaintiff appealed on three grounds, losing two and gaining some minor traction on the third.
The initial argument that the premature filing of the cost memorandum was infirm was found unpersuasive, because it is a mere irregularity and there was no prejudice because the lower court did conduct a hearing on the cost issues.
The second argument was that the CMIA does not allow recovery of costs to a prevailing defendant because the statute only mentions recovery of fees and costs to a prevailing plaintiff. The appellate court rejected this argument because nothing in the CMIA disallows recovery of costs to the defense, relying on analogous reasoning from the California Supreme Court’s Murillo opinion in reaching that conclusion.
Finally, the appellate court sustained the lower court awarding these costs: (1) videotaping depositions; (2) eCheck fee added to electronic filing charges; (3) remote appearance notice filing fees; (4) electronic filing fees charged by a third-party provider; (5) discovery motions; and (6) withdrawn motions. However, it did reduce the costs award a little more by finding that a Portland attorney saying she had a San Francisco office should not have garnered deposition travel and meal expenses to the Bay Area office, as well as finding that electronic serving of document costs were merely convenient rather than necessary to the litigation.
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