Mitchell Eng?g. v. City of San Francisco, 2010 WL 2951856 (N.D. Cal. July 27, 2010)

Key Insight: Where plaintiff offered to produce hard copy ?job files? for non-city projects as an alternative to conducting key word searching of 25 custodians to identify emails related to non-city projects but where defendant objected that hard copy was less searchable and would not contain all relevant emails, court denied defendant?s motion to compel keyword searching and production of ESI citing the more than two month delay since the issue was first raised, the close proximity of trial, and the court?s inability to determine the relevance of the 188 proposed search terms and ordered plaintiff?s production of hard copy files

Electronic Data Involved: Emails, ESI, hard copy