Teksavvy is asking for $346,480.68 for its “reasonable costs” from Voltage Pictures

I attended on Monday December 8, 2014 as a spectator at the hearing at the Federal Court in the Voltage Pictures v. John Doe and Jane Doe matter presided over by Mme Prothonotary Aronovitch concerning Teksavvy’s motion to be reimbursed by Voltage for its “reasonable costs in the event it had to release information” arising from Prothonotary Aalto’s order of February 20, 2014 which ordered that that:

3. All reasonable legal costs, administrative costs and disbursements incurred by TekSavvy in abiding by this Order shall be paid by the Plaintiff to TekSavvy.   

4. The reasonable legal costs and disbursements of TekSavvy referred to in paragraph 3 herein shall be paid prior to the release to the Plaintiff of the information referred to in paragraph 2 herein.

Teksavvy is asking for the sum of $346,480.68 for its “reasonable costs”, which includes almost $180,000 in legal fees.  Here’s Teksavvy’s own summary of the costs it seeks to recover:

Category Costs

A. Legal costs:

A.1 Stikeman Elliott LLP $ 123,580.98

A.2 Christian Tacit $ 54,240.00

B. Administrative Costs:

B.1 Information Technology $ 27,092.50

B.2 Operations $ 81,524.18

C. Disbursements:

C.1 TekSavvy Inc. $ 55,457.60

C.2 Stikeman Elliott LLP $ 4,585.42

Total: $ 346,480.68

For its part, Voltage suggests that the maximum it should pay for Teksavvy’s “reasonable costs”, including legal fees, for compliance with Prothonotary Aalto’s order should be no more than $884.00.

That is quite some discrepancy.  Full details are available in the hundreds of pages of documents, including time dockets, affidavits and transcripts of cross-examination that are available here, courtesy of CIPPIC. 

I could say a great deal about this matter, but I won’t say any more at this time.  I’ve already said a lot in past blog posts.  In fact, all I will say now is that I find it interesting that my past blog posts about this matter were referred to in the time dockets of Teksavvy’s lead outside counsel viewable via CIPPC’s website.

HPK