Case T‑235/18 DEP
Qualcomm Inc.,
v
European Commission
Order of the General Court (Second Chamber, Extended Composition) of 29 February 2024
(Procedure – Taxation of costs)
1. Judicial proceedings – Costs – Taxation of costs – Recoverable costs – Concept – Expenses necessarily incurred by the parties – Elements to be taken into consideration
(Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 140(b))
(see paragraphs 12, 27)
2. Judicial proceedings – Publication of decisions – Omission of personal data of natural persons vis-à-vis the public – Omission of data other than personal data of natural persons vis-à-vis the public – Conditions
(Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Arts 66 and 66a)
(see paragraphs 15-18)
3. Judicial proceedings – Costs – Taxation of costs – Recoverable costs – Expenses necessarily incurred for the purposes of the proceedings – Fees of lawyers relating to proceedings other than those before the General Court – Not included
(Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 140(b))
(see paragraphs 21-23)
4. Judicial proceedings – Costs – Taxation of costs – Recoverable costs – Expenses necessarily incurred by the parties – Fees of lawyers and of economists – Taxation on the basis of precise information provided by the applicant or, in default, on the basis of an equitable assessment by the EU judicature
(Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 140(b))
(see paragraphs 26, 39, 40, 45, 47-49, 58, 59, 63-69)
5. Judicial proceedings – Costs – Taxation of costs – Recoverable costs – Involvement of more than one lawyer – Irrelevant – Assessment having regard primarily to the total number of hours’ work objectively necessary for the purpose of the proceedings – Criteria
(Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 140(b))
(see paragraphs 34-40, 46, 53)
6. Judicial proceedings – Costs – Taxation of costs – Recoverable costs – Expenses necessarily incurred by the parties – Travel and subsistence expenses of lawyers for the purpose of attending the hearing and costs of the hire of a meeting room and equipment – Conditions for reimbursement
(Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 140(b))
(see paragraphs 73, 75, 80, 82, 85)
7. Judicial proceedings – Costs – Taxation of costs – Recoverable costs – Expenses necessarily incurred by the parties – Travel and subsistence expenses of persons other than the parties’ lawyers – Conditions for reimbursement
(Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 140(b))
(see paragraphs 74, 98)
Résumé
Hearing an application for taxation of costs, the General Court summarises the case-law relating to the reimbursement of costs relating to main proceedings brought before it, from the perspective of competition law.
The applicant, Qualcomm Inc., had brought an action seeking the annulment of the Commission’s decision imposing a fine on it of almost EUR 1 billion for having abused its dominant position on the worldwide chipsets market.
By its judgment of 15 June 2022, (1) the Court annulled the contested decision in its entirety and ordered the Commission to pay the costs incurred by the applicant. As there was no agreement between the parties on the amount of recoverable costs, the applicant submitted an application for taxation of costs to the Court, by which it sought reimbursement, first, of the fees relating to the services of legal and economic advisory services and, second, of disbursements for the purpose of attending the hearing, totalling more than EUR 12 million.
Findings of the Court
As a preliminary point, examining the question of the confidentiality of the application for taxation of costs and its annexes, the Court states that the mere presence of the word ‘confidential’, placed on those documents by the applicant, cannot be interpreted as constituting an application for the omission of certain information vis-à-vis the public, in the absence of an application to that effect made by means of a separate document, (2) since the Court cannot proceed by assumptions or remedy any shortcomings in such an application.
Continuing its substantive analysis, the Court rejects, in the first place, the application for reimbursement of the lawyers’ fees incurred in the proceedings conducted in the United States. In that regard, the Court recalls that the concept of ‘recoverable costs’ is limited to expenses necessarily incurred by the parties for the purpose of the proceedings before it and cannot cover costs relating to other judicial or administrative proceedings before other national or international courts or authorities, even where such proceedings seek, as in the present case, to obtain information or documents intended to substantiate the pleas in law of an action before the Court.
In the second place, in relation to the reimbursement of lawyers’ fees incurred for the purpose of the proceedings, the Court must take into account the subject matter and nature of the dispute, its importance from the point of view of EU law and also the difficulties presented by the case, the amount of work which the contentious proceedings generated for the agents or advisers involved and the economic interest which the dispute presented for the parties.
Accordingly, in assessing the amount of work which the proceedings generated for the applicant’s representatives, the primary consideration of the EU Courts is the total number of hours of work which may appear to be objectively necessary for the purpose of those proceedings, irrespective of the number of lawyers who may have provided the services in question. Although, in principle, only payment of the fees of a single lawyer is recoverable, it may be that, depending on the specific circumstances of each case, most notably its complexity, the fees of more than one lawyer may be found to be necessarily incurred. In that case, the Court must examine the extent to which the services supplied by all the lawyers concerned were necessary for the conduct of the legal proceedings and satisfy itself that there was no unnecessary duplication of costs. In that regard, where lawyers have already assisted a party during proceedings or procedures prior to the action, one must also consider the point that they are aware of relevant matters, which is likely to have facilitated their work and reduced the preparation time required for the judicial proceedings. However, the costs of coordination between lawyers for the same party cannot be regarded as necessary.
In the present case, while the dispute in the main proceedings could indeed have demanded significant work in view of the complexity of the legal issues raised and the economic interests at stake, the evidence produced by the applicant does not enable an assessment to be made of the number of hours corresponding to the various tasks performed by its lawyers, whether those hours worked were for the purposes of the proceedings before the Court or whether they were necessarily incurred for that purpose. The mere fact that documents with numerous pages and numerous annexes were lodged by the applicant’s representatives before the Court in no way demonstrates that the hours of work, and therefore the sums claimed relating thereto, were necessary.
Furthermore, the documents adduced do not enable a precise determination to be made of the hourly rate corresponding to the various tasks performed. In that regard, while it is true that a party is free to use lawyers charging very high hourly rates, the fact of using their services cannot be regarded as necessary, particularly where, as in the present case, those rates are not presented, in the application, in relation to specific, clearly identified tasks.
Therefore, in the absence of any information on the costs actually incurred, the Court makes an equitable, but necessarily strict, assessment of the lawyers’ fees which are recoverable. In the present case, in order to assess the working time objectively necessary for the purpose of the proceedings, the General Court takes into account the number of pleas raised, the difficulty of the legal and factual issues raised, the number and linked nature of the procedural documents, the evidence produced in annex thereto and submitted to the Court and the progressively more targeted and detailed nature of the argument developed. As regards the hourly rate, in the absence, in EU law, of a relevant scale, it is only where the average hourly rate invoiced appears, as in the present case, manifestly excessive that the Court may depart from it and fix ex aequo et bono the amount of the lawyers’ fees recoverable.
In the third place, the Court also makes an equitable, but strict, assessment of the costs recoverable in respect of fees relating to the advice of economic experts, whose involvement was objectively necessary for the purpose of the proceedings, in the absence of any specific information on the volume of work carried out by them and the hourly rate relating to such advice.
In the fourth place, as regards the travel and subsistence expenses incurred for the purposes of the hearing, only the travel expenses and expenses relating to the overnight accommodation of the lawyers who represented the applicant and made oral submissions before the Court may be regarded as recoverable. By contrast, reimbursement of the travel and subsistence expenses of an employee of the applicant is rejected, since the applicant has not provided justification that the presence of that employee was necessary for the purposes of the proceedings, the mere fact that that employee was following the case within the undertaking being manifestly insufficient in that regard.
Similarly, while the hire of a meeting room in the applicant’s lawyers’ hotel may be regarded as actually necessary, having regard to the duration of the hearing and the number of lawyers involved, hiring it for three full days appears to be excessive in the absence of details provided in that regard.
In view of all the foregoing, the Court fixes the total amount of costs recoverable by the applicant at almost EUR 800 000.