E-Discovery Amendments to California’s Civil Discovery Act Now Awaiting Governor’s Signature
Assembly Bill 926 (Evans): Passed the Senate July 10, 2008; Passed the Assembly August 7, 2008
The amendments included in AB 926 closely track several of the 2006 e-discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Among other things, the amendments:
— Establish procedures for a person to obtain discovery of electronically stored information, as defined, in addition to documents, tangible things, or land or other property, in the possession of any other party to the action.
— Provide that if a party responding to a demand for production of ESI objects to a specified form for producing the information, or if no form is specified in the demand, the responding party shall state in its response the form in which it intends to produce each type of information. If a demand for production does not specify a form or forms for producing a type of ESI, the responding party would be required to produce the information in the form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a form that is reasonably usable, but need not produce the same ESI in more than one form.