Format Of Production – Page 9 – Electronic Discovery Law

Arkansas River Power Auth. v. Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Grp., Inc., No. 14-cv-00368-CMA-NYW, 2015 WL 2128312 (D. Colo. May 5, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Addressing several disputes, court concluded that parties having agreed on an ESI production ?must only comply with Rule 34(b)(2)(E)(ii)? and that the question was therefore whether the defendant ?produced its ESI in the form in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form or forms. The rule clearly requires one or the other, but not both.?; where defendant produced majority of its documents in a reasonably usable form (TIFF), court declined to compel production of additional metadata

Nature of Case: Breach of contract and related claims

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Moore v. Wayne Smith Trucking, Inc., No. 14-1919, 2015 WL 6438913 (E.D. La. Oct. 21, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court concluded that Facebook materials are discoverable but would not require Defendant to produce his username and password and instead ordered Defendant to provide his attorney with postings from the relevant time period to be reviewed by the attorney?and not the defendant?to identify responsive information

Nature of Case: Personal injury

Electronic Data Involved: Social network contents (e.g., Facebook, MySpace)

Truesdell v. Thomas No. 5:13-cv-552-Oc-10PRL, 2015 WL 2022991 (M.D. Fla. Apr. 30, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court denied Motion to Compel Production of Electronically Stored Data where plaintiff said that 1500 printed pages of defendant?s database usage history were inadequate under FRCP 34(e)(ii) because they were not easily searchable. Plaintiff sought to compel production of the electronic version of the data to include metadata, but the court said that the printed information was not as cumbersome as the plaintiff suggested because only a limited time period contained within the pages was relevant; the data did not originate from the defendant, so the defendant did not have the ability to manipulate the data to provide it only for the limited time period; and the plaintiff was unable to identify any information contained in the electronic version of the data that was not also contained in the printed pages.

Nature of Case: Privacy Rights

Electronic Data Involved: Database

In re State Farm Lloyds, 13?14?00616?CV, 2015 WL 6520998 (Tex. App. Oct. 28, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court denied petition for writ of mandamus, where real party properly requested native and near-native format of production for ESI, including metadata, under Texas Rules of Civil Procedure 196.4. Court said that relator was not entitled to unilaterally produce ESI in a ?reasonably usable? format and had offered only conclusory testimony that production of ESI in the requested format was unduly burdensome.

Nature of Case: Insurance claim

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Wilson v. Conair, No. 1:14-cv-00894-WBS-SAB, 2015 WL 1994270 (E.D. Cal. Apr. 30, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Although ?[t]he rules do not require a party to produce ESI in the form most helpful to the opposing party[,]? the court ordered Defendant to produce additional discovery in TIFF format and to produce the metadata for all documents already produced (in PDF format)

Nature of Case: Class action

Electronic Data Involved: ESI (.xls, proprietary format)

SFP Works LLC v. Buffalo Armory LLC, No. 14-13575, 2015 WL 7294580 (E.D. Mich. Nov. 19, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where Plaintiff alleged it could not access the data produced by defendant?even with the use of specialized software provided by Defendant and the assistance of a third party vendor?and refused the options provided by defendant insisting instead that defendant must re-load the date to ensure it was not corrupted, the court noted Plaintiff?s failure to timely seek a solution to the discovery problems or to mitigate the difficulties by pursuing any of the offered remedial measures and denied the motion to compel access to the at-issue information

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI (“operational data”)

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