Court Grants Motion to Compel Production of Information on Computer Disks

Storch v. Ipco Safety Prod. Co. of Pa., 1997 WL 401589 (E.D. Pa. July 16, 1997)

Plaintiff sought production of a disk containing sales data that had been produced in hard copy form, arguing that the electronic version was needed in order to run an analysis of the information. Otherwise, she stated, she would incur between $10,000 and $20,000 in data encoding fees to properly format the information. The defendant merely argued that it was still investigating its ability to provide the information in computerized form.

The court held: “[I]n this age of high-technology where much of our information is transmitted by computer and computer disks, it is not unreasonable for the defendant to produce the information on computer disk for the plaintiff.” 1997 WL 401589, at *2. Finding that the defendant had not provided sufficient reasons why it could not provide the information in the form requested, the court ordered it to provide the relevant sales data on disk.