Court Orders Producing Party to Bear the Cost of Production but Not Conversion where Documents are Produced as Ordinarily Maintained, Declines to Compel Production of All Metadata
Dahl v. Bain Capital Partners, LLC, 2009 WL 1748526 (D. Mass. June 22, 2009)
In a comprehensive yet brief opinion, the court addressed several issues including the cost of conversion and production of electronically stored information (“ESI”) and the production of metadata, among other things.
Specifically, noting that “courts will rarely shift costs to the requesting party and this is not one of those exceptional circumstances,” the court declined to shift the cost of defendants’ production of electronically stored information (“ESI”) but held that defendants would not have to pay to change the format of their responsive documents and that plaintiffs would bear the cost for such modification, if desired. In support of its holding, the court reasoned: