The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a district court finding in Colosi v. Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc., 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 4184 (6th Cir. Ohio 2015), which found that the cost of imaging a hard drive is a taxable cost recoverable by a prevailing party under 28 U.S.C. § 1920(4).

Title 28, § 1920 of the U.S. Code details the taxation of costs a judge or clerk can award to a prevailing party in federal court. Subsection (4) allows a court to reimburse a prevailing party for the “cost of making copies of any materials where the copies are necessarily obtained for use in the case.”

In Colosi, Brenda Colosi lost a wrongful termination suit against her former employer, Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc. (JLL). As the prevailing party, JLL filed a $6,369.55 bill of costs to the court clerk, who approved the costs without modification. The district court found the costs “reasonable and necessary to the litigation and properly taxable under the statute.”