NEWS FROM U.S. DISTRICT COURT
February 9, 2024
Bill of Costs Guide. If you represent a prevailing party in a federal lawsuit, you may find the Bill of Costs Guide on our website helpful. It addresses the procedure for electronically filing bills of cost in CM/ECF and identifies taxable and non-taxable costs. It also includes a section on how to seek review of the Clerk’s Taxation of Costs. As a general rule, the Clerk will deny costs that are beyond the Clerk’s authority to tax or where the authority to tax such costs is unclear.
Jury Instructions. If you need help preparing jury instructions, we have several resources available on our website. Following the completion of every jury trial, we post final instructions on the Court’s website. Currently there are over 520 sets of searchable jury instructions in this database. To access these instructions, go to https://www.sdd.uscourts.gov, hover your mouse over the For Attorneys tab, click on the Jury Instructions option, and choose “Click Here to Access South Dakota Jury Instructions.”
To search this database, simply click on the column title on the top row of page 1. You can sort by case type (civil or criminal), by judge, by issue/charge, by the year the instructions were filed, or, if you know, by the case name. You can also use the search box located in the upper right-hand corner of the webpage.
In addition, attorneys may also access Eighth Circuit pattern jury instructions on this website. In 2022, the Eighth Circuit Pattern Jury Instruction Committee developed the Jury Instructions Builder (JIB). To access the JIB, go to the court’s public website, hover over the For Attorneys tab, and choose “Eighth Circuit Model Jury Instructions.” You will then be forwarded to the JIB. Simply select the type of instructions you want to build, Civil or Criminal, and click on the gray box as indicated below.
You may also access the JIB directly by going to https://juryinstructions.ca8.uscourts.gov.
Reminder. The Court will be closed on Monday, February 19th for Presidents’ Day.