Production of Email in Native Format Satisfies Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(2)(E)
Perfect Barrier LLC v. Woodsmart Solutions Inc., 2008 WL 2230192 (N.D. Ind. May 27, 2008)
In this case, one of plaintiff’s requests for production sought emails — plaintiff provided defendant with search terms and desired to have all emails that contained the relevant search terms. Defendant complied with the request and produced approximately 75,000 pages of email documents on disk. However, defendant designated the entire email production as Type C documents, “Attorney-Eyes-Only," pursuant to the parties’ agreed protective order.
Plaintiff thereafter filed a motion to compel compliance with the protective order, and for sanctions. At issue was whether defendant violated the terms of the parties’ protective order by designating all emails as “attorney eyes only,” and whether defendant should be required to re-produce the email in a different format.