Category: ESI

Are ESI Costs Recoverable If The Parties Did Not Have An ESI Formatting Agreement?

Our last post began a discussion of Bonillas v. United Air Lines Inc., No. C-12-06574(EDL) (N.D. Cal. Dec. 19, 2014), where United Airlines has filed a currently pending Bill of Costs for ESI as the prevailing party under § 1920(4). (Read our last post for the details on United’s initial Bill of

Agreement on Native Productions Notwithstanding Disputes Regarding Deduplication, Metadata and PDF Sub-Files

In Williams v. Convival Corp, et al., Case No. 2:13-cv-02019-APG-PAL (D.Nev. December 5, 2014), the parties disagreed on an appropriate ESI Protocol Order and sought the court’s guidance. Plaintiff wanted the protocol to begin with a guidelines section that i) encouraged reasonable eDiscovery with the goal of limiting cost, burden and time; ii) required

Plaintiff Not Obligated To Produce ESI Maintained By Plaintiff’s eDiscovery Vendor

In Ablan v. Bank of America, Case No. 11 C 4493 (N.D.Ill. Nov. 24, 2014), Defendant sought discovery from Plaintiff regarding documents and data that third-party Tax Strategies Group (TSG) had produced in a related settled state court litigation. Plaintiff stated that it had disposed of the discovery TSG produced in the state court action, and

Court Rejects Defendant’s Attempt to Avoid Production Because of a Software Licensing Issue

In Pero v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., No. 3:14-CV-16-PRL-CCS (E.D. Tenn. December 1, 2014), a railroad conductor alleged he suffered injury after trying to remove a fallen tree from a train track. Plaintiff’s eDiscovery requests requested that Defendant produce the video recording from a camera mounted on front of the train. Plaintiff alleged it needed

Can The Government Obtain a Warrant For Email Data Stored Overseas?

In the Matter of a Warrant to Search the E-mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corporation, 13 Mag. 2814 (S.D.N.Y), the Southern District of New York considered a warrant authorizing the search and seizure of Microsoft email analytics and data stored overseas in Dublin, Ireland. Microsoft moved to quash the

Does Computer-Assisted Privilege Review Obviate a Request for Human Review?

Today’s blog post involves Federal Rule of Evidence 502, which was adopted to reduce concerns that the increasing production of electronically stored information (ESI) would lead to the aggressive use of waiver in cases of inadvertent disclosure of privileged information. To paraphrase, Rule 502(d) deems that a privileged disclosure does not constitute a

Can a Database Be Too “Large and Unindexed” for an ESI Search?

Can a defendant successfully convince a court that because its electronic database is “large and unindexed,” the defendant does not have to search the database for responsive records pursuant to a plaintiff’s ESI request? Or, alternatively, if a court requires a defendant to search a “large and unindexed” database, should it shift the costs of production onto the

Court-ordered Disclosure of Metadata Uncovers Falsified Document

Metadata, a.k.a. the “data about data,” provides an extremely useful source of electronic discovery information, and new cases every day demonstrate that courts increasingly recognize its relevancy as evidence. In Tangible Value, LLC v. Town Sports International Holdings Inc., Civil Action No. 10-1453-MAS-TJB (D.N.J. November 19, 2014), the production of metadata irrevocably altered

Can Plaintiff Receive Expedited Discovery to Investigate Spoliation?

In the class action case Mirkarimi v. Nevada Property 1 LLC, Case No. 12cv-2160-BTM (DHB) (S.D.Cal. November 18, 2014), the court granted a number of extensions for class certification discovery between March and September of 2014. Defendant repeatedly indicated to Plaintiff and the court that it was diligently retrieving audio recordings

Plaintiffs Defeat Efforts to Limit Custodians and Search Terms

The Plaintiffs in A&R Body Specialty and Collision Works v. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, Civ. No. 3:07CV929 (WWE) (D.Conn. November 19, 2014) recently learned an important lesson in terms of when an electronically stored information dispute warrants a court’s intervention. Plaintiffs had sought supplemental discovery from defendants after receiving a disappointing initial document