Rosado‘s shortcoming is that it says nothing about who should pay the costs of production. As to this question, one turns to the case of Schroeder v. Centro Pariso Tropical which, briefly, states that the defendant in the litigation was not required “to help a third party defendant defray the costs of its own discovery”. From here, one must also look at Rubin v. Alamo Rent-a-Car, which, on appeal, stated that “each party should shoulder the initial burden of financing his or her own suit” and based upon such a principle, it is the party seeking discovery of documents who should pay the cost of their reproduction.

In reaching this conclusion, it is clear the Rubin Court relied heavily on the Rosado decision. However, Rubin went beyond Rosado by citing Wiseman v. American Motors Sales Corp, noting authority to support the proposition that a party seeking disclosure of documents should pay the costs of reproduction.

Based on this, a general consensus has been formed that each party is responsible for the costs associated with multi-language translation of documents they bring to a litigation and/or the documents that they specifically request to be produced by the opposing side.

Source: Patrick M. Connors. Which Party Pays the Costs of Document Disclosure? Pace Law Review, Vol. 29, No. 441, 2009

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