In re Takata Airbag Prods. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 2599 (S.D. Fla. Mar. 1, 2016)

In this opinion, the District Court considered Defendants’ proposal to redact or withhold certain irrelevant information from responsive documents and document families. In approving the proposal, the court cited Chief Justice John Roberts’ recent comments that recently amended Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 “crystalizes the concept of reasonable limits on discovery through increased reliance on the common-sense concept of proportionality.” Reasoning that such comments “highlight” that “a party is not entitled to receive every piece of relevant information,” the court concluded that “it [was] only logical” that “a party is similarly not entitled to received every piece of irrelevant information in responsive documents if the producing party has a persuasive reason for why such information should be withheld.”

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Pyrrho Investments Ltd v MWB Property Ltd [2016] EWHC 256 (Ch)

On February 2, 2016 an English court approved the use of predictive coding for the first time. Thereafter, it issued an opinion explaining the reasons for approval, relying in part upon the well-known Da Silva Moore case, which was the first to approve the use of predictive coding in American litigation.

Following extensive discussion of the issue, including acknowledging the parties’ agreement to utilize predictive coding in this case, the court laid out the factors it considered in favor of approving the use of predictive coding, noting “there were no factors of any weight pointing in the opposite direction”:

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Gardner v. Continental Cas. Co., 3:13 CV 1918 (JBA), 2016 WL 155002 (D. Conn. Jan. 1, 2016)

Plaintiffs sought to compel production of all 38,000 documents hit by agreed-upon search terms.  Following review for relevance and privilege, Defendant produced only 2,214 pages “of which 274 pages consisted of copies of the complaints, with exhibits, filed in this lawsuit.” The court declined to compel the production of all search hits, but acknowledged concerns regarding Defendant’s production based on documents produced by a third party.  Accordingly, the court ordered the parties to confer regarding variations of “sampling and iterative refinement” or “a quick peek protocol” of the documents hit by search terms and also indicated willingness to consider appointment of a Special Master to conduct a review of the documents at the expense of the parties.

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