Portal:Supreme Court of the United States

“ If Oracle were right that “full costs” covers all of a party’s litigation expenditures, then the first sentence of §505 would presumably already cover attorney’s fees and the second sentence would be largely unnecessary. In order to avoid some redundancy, Oracle’s interpretation would create other redundancy.
Finally, even if Oracle is correct that the term “full” has become unnecessary or redundant as a result of the 1976 amendment, Oracle overstates the significance of statutory surplusage or redundancy. Redundancy is not a silver bullet. ”

“ The statutory text and our precedents establish that the answer is no. The term “full” is a term of quantity or amount; it does not expand the categories or kinds of expenses that may be awarded as “costs” under the general costs statute. ”

“ See American Heritage Dictionary 709 (5th ed. 2011) ; Oxford English Dictionary 247 (2d ed. 1989) . As we said earlier this Term: “Adjectives modify nouns—they pick out a subset of a category that possesses a certain quality.” ”