I do not normally want to high five Federal judges, but Judge Ronald Buch, a Tax Judge in Texas, sure deserved one after his Dynamo Holdings opinion.
The discovery dispute can be summed up as a battle over backup tapes that had confidential information. The Requesting Party wanted the tapes; the Producing Party wanted to use predictive coding to produce what was relevant, because the cost for reviewing the material for privilege and relevancy would cost $450,000 with manual review. Dynamo Holdings v. Comm’r, 2014 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 40 (Docket Nos. 2685-11, 8393-12. Filed September 17, 2014.)
The Requesting Party wanted the backup tapes to analyze metadata on when ESI was created. Moreover, the Requesting Party called “Predictive Coding” an “unproven technology.” The Requesting Party attempted to address the Producing Party’s cost concern with a clawback agreement. Dynamo Holdings, at *3.
After an evidentiary hearing with experts on the use of predictive coding, the Court granted the Producing Party’s motion to use predictive coding. Judge Buch had a “dynamo” quote on the entire issue of asking to use predictive coding:
“And although it is a proper role of the Court to supervise the discovery process and intervene when it is abused by the parties, the Court is not normally in the business of dictating to parties the process that they should use when responding to discovery. If our focus were on paper discovery, we would not (for example) be dictating to a party the manner in which it should review documents for responsiveness or privilege, such as whether that review should be done by a paralegal, a junior attorney, or a senior attorney. Yet that is, in essence, what the parties are asking the Court to consider–whether document review should be done by humans or with the assistance of computers. Respondent fears an incomplete response to his discovery. If respondent believes that the ultimate discovery response is incomplete and can support that belief, he can file another motion to compel at that time. Nonetheless, because we have not previously addressed the issue of computer-assisted review tools, we will address it here.
Dynamo Holdings, at *10-11.
It is so refreshing to see a Judge address the issue of requesting to use a specific technology. No one does a motion to compel asking for permission on what lawyers should do document review. Moreover, no moving party asks permission to use visual analytics, de-duplication, or any of the other outstanding technology available to conduct eDiscovery.
The opinion ends with that if the Requesting Party believed the discovery response was incomplete, then a motion to compel could be filed, which is exactly the way the process should work. The issue should not be “can we use this technology,” whether the production is adequate or not, which requires evidence of a production gaps or other evidence that not all responsive information was produced.
Well done Judge Buch.