Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd.
United States Supreme Court
132 S.Ct. 1997, 566 U.S. 560 (2012)
- Written by Josh Lee, JD
Facts
Kouichi Taniguchi (plaintiff) was a professional baseball player in Japan who was injured while touring the property of Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd. (Kan Pacific) (defendant). Taniguchi sued Kan Pacific to recover for the injuries. Before trial, Kan Pacific paid to have certain written documents translated from Japanese to English in order to prepare a defense. The trial court granted summary judgment to Kan Pacific and awarded the costs of the translation to Kan Pacific under 28 U.S.C. § 1920, which allowed costs to be awarded to prevailing parties in federal lawsuits. Previously, the Court Interpreters Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1827, had added the compensation of interpreters to § 1920 as a cost that could be awarded to a prevailing party. The district court determined that the costs of written-document translation qualified as the compensation of an interpreter. The court of appeals affirmed, and the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Alito, J.)
Dissent (Ginsburg, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 806,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
