Court disallows expert disbursements in patent case
Counsel should be prudent in determining when it is appropriate to retain experts and have them incur costs on your client’s behalf.
In a decision determining allowable costs of the respondent Pharmascience in a proceeding discontinued by the applicant Sanofi-Aventis under the Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations, an assessment officer sought to determine whether expert witness disbursements totalling $17,000 could be claimed in the circumstances.
The three part test for the allowance of expert disbursements requires that:
(1) The disbursement for an expert must be prudent and reasonable in the circumstances existing at the time it was incurred;
(2) The terms of engagement must not constitute a blank cheque; and
(3) The extent of reliance on the expert by the trial judge should be a factor.
As per the third part of the test, disbursements cannot be disallowed based solely on the fact that a matter is discontinued (and thus never heard by a judge), as this would require hindsight. However, they must be reasonably incurred in the circumstances.In this case, a majority of the experts’ fees were incurred prior to the initial case management conference to set a schedule for the exchange of evidence, and were not even alleged to have been incurred in support of an early motion to dismiss. As a result, given that the ultimate burden of proof rested with the applicant Sanofi, the experts’ fees were found to be premature and therefore not allowed.
