Format Of Production – Page 10 – Electronic Discovery Law

U.S. v. Capitol Supply, Inc., No. 13-mc-0373 (BAH), 2014 WL 1046006 (D.D.C. Mar. 19, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where government had requested production in specific electronic formats (Database, Access or Excel) but company produced materials in PDF format that lacked requested detail and was not searchable across multiple documents, court found production insufficient and noted that the fact that company’s databases lacked certain functionality did not relieve company from responding to subpoenas with responsive information in usable, searchable format and directed company to produce responsive information “in a format that is reasonably usable, which includes searchable, just as its databases are presumably designed to respond to search queries”

Nature of Case: Investigation by Office of the Inspector General re whether company violated the False Claims Act; government petitioned for summary enforcement of OIG supboenas to Capitol Supply, Inc.

Electronic Data Involved: Sales data, country-of-origin information

Virco Mfg. Corp. v. Hertz Furniture Sys., No. CV 13-2205 JAK(JCx), 2014 WL 12591482 (C.D. Cal. Fan. 21, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: The court granted Defendant?s motion to compel production of email attachments, noting that ?by failing to produce email attachments, plaintiff has effectively redacted, based upon relevance, portions of documents it otherwise apparently views to be discoverable/relevant/responsive to defendants? discovery requests.? The court further noted that Plaintiff ?offered no evidence that it would suffer any undue burden from producing such electronic data.?

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Green v. Monarch Recovery Mgmt., Inc., No. 1:13-cv-00418-SEB-MJD, 2014 WL 1631825 (S.D. Ind. Apr. 24, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where defendant produced PDF version of requested spreadsheet which was over 1,000 pages long when printed with only 50 pages that were not redacted, court ruled that spreadsheet must be produced in its native Excel format, explaining: 1) “One of the unique strengths of Excel software is the ability to implement calculations and formulae that are not evident in a PDF version, so merely a PDF imprint of the surface information is not sufficient,” 2) the ability to search the spreadsheet is essential to its usefulness, and 3) due to its structure, a printed or PDF version of a large Excel spreadsheet is “often useless” from an evidentiary standpoint

Nature of Case: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act claims

Electronic Data Involved: Excel spreadsheet

Sexton v. Lecavalier, 11 F. Supp. 3d 439 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 11, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court declined to hold third party in contempt where failure to produce Gmail in native format was result of good faith (but mistaken) belief that Gmail emails cannot be produced in native format; opinion noted options for production of Gmail emails in native format

Electronic Data Involved: Gmail emails

Ogden v. All-State Career School, No. 2:13cv406, 2014 WL 1646934 (W.D. Pa. Apr. 23, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court observed that ordering plaintiff to permit access to or produce complete copies of his social networking accounts would permit defendant to cast too wide a net and sanction an inquiry into scores of quasi-personal information that would be irrelevant and non-discoverable, and stated: ?Defendant is no more entitled to such unfettered access to plaintiff’s personal email and social networking communications than it is to rummage through the desk drawers and closets in plaintiff’s home”; court ruled that defendant was only entitled to limited discovery of plaintiff’s communications, and set out particular steps that plaintiff must take to comply with defendant?s requests

Nature of Case: Hostile work environment and disparate treatment based on reverse gender discrimination and retaliation claims

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic communications made or affirmatively acknowledged by plaintiff on any social networking website (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) during the period of alleged harassment

Nat?l Jewish Health v. WebMD Health Servs. Grp., Inc., No. 12-cv-02834-WYD-MJW, 2014 WL 2118585 (D. Colo. May 21, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where Plaintiff maintained emails in Enterprise Vault with journaling capabilities (which captures and stores all emails in one place) and all ESI produced was searchable, sortable, paired with relevant metadata and included Concordance load files (and where emails were also produced with their attachments), the special master found the production met the requirements of 34(b)(2)(E)(ii) and was both properly produced in the form in which it was ordinarily maintained and in a reasonably usable form and further found that although 34(b)(2)(E)(i) did not apply to ESI, the production also satisfied the traditional requirement to produce documents (which ESI is not) in the manner in which it is kept in the usual course of business; special master made clear that a custodian need not be an individual and that ?[a] company, through an IT department, can serve as the custodian of electronic files kept on company servers.?

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, email

Castillon v. Corrections Corp. of Am., No. 1:12-cv-005590EJL, 2014 WL 517505 (D. Idaho Feb. 7, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where defendant produced data from timekeeping system in searchable .PDF format and provided attestation from the vice president of technology and chief information officer that that .PDF was the ?only, built-in, reasonably accessible data format? and that producing in the requested format would require Defendant to undertake the ?lengthy and daunting? task of writing a script and where Plaintiffs did not specify the format of production in their request, the court declined to compel re-production of the at-issue data, but noted that if Plaintiffs were willing to pay for the expense of writing a script, ?they may approach Defendant with such a request.?

Nature of Case: Prisoners’ civil rights

Electronic Data Involved: Data from timekeeping system

E.A.F.F. v. United States, No. SA-08-CA-124-XR, 2014 WL 1652598 (W.D. Tex. Apr. 23, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Rejecting plaintiff’s challenge to $65,000 for scanning expenses as taxable costs where discovery production was voluminous and parties had agreed that defendants would produce their responsive documents in electronic format, court ruled that scanning of documents to create digital duplicates amounted to “making copies of materials” under Section 1920(4); however, because invoices indicated that requested costs may include more than just scanning, court would allow defendants to supplement bill of costs to specifically identify which portion of invoice was for scanning/making copies or to clarify that the entire cost was, in fact, for scanning/making copies

Nature of Case: Unaccompanied alien minors brought action against Office of Refugee Resettlement alleging they were physically and sexually abused while in detention awaiting final adjudication of their immigration status

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic images of paper documents

Clauss Constr. v. UChicago Argonne, LLC, No. 13 C 5479, 2014 WL 5390665 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 20, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where plaintiff discovered numerous boxes of relevant or potentially relevant documents that had not been previously produced, but did not produce them in electronic format with Bates-labeling in accordance with parties’ agreed production protocol and instead provided photographs of the documents and boxes and some incomplete indexes, defendants successfully argued that plaintiff either should have to comply with parties’ agreement and produce material in correct format or nonconforming documents should be excluded; plaintiff chose to have newly discovered documents excluded from evidence; court found that monetary sanctions were appropriate and awarded defendant its attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred in filing the motion and attending hearing

Nature of Case: Breach of contract claims

Electronic Data Involved: Hard copy documents

Am. Gen. Life Ins. Co. v. Vistana Condominium Owners Assoc., No. 2:12-cv-01324-JAD-NJK, 2014 WL 2041950 (D. Nev. May 16, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where defendant produced documents as they were received from third parties and with metadata allowing plaintiff to identify the documents by bates range, file path, and document title, court found that the production ?largely complied? with Rule 34 and the obligation to produce documents as kept in the usual course of business and that sanctions were not warranted but also found that the responses created unnecessary obstacles to the plaintiff and ordered defendant to indicate whether the documents it produced were actually responsive, reasoning that plaintiff should not have to ?guess at which requests were responded to and which were not?

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Tag:Format Of Production