Knotty Issues of eDiscovery
I have never been a fan of Courts limiting how many search terms parties can use to find responsive ESI with no regard for how searches in review applications work. That is right up there with blaming high litigation costs because lawyers read. Limiting search terms also could limit the[…]
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Parties in litigation often want to charge every windmill. The desire to fight every battle, or propound requests, conduct review, or issue deposition notices, can result in high costs with little results. Proportionality is one tool judges have to keep parties from destructive discovery conduct. In a contentious eDiscovery case,[…]
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Problems do not improve by not talking about them. In an employment discrimination case, the Defendants sought production of several exhibits from the Plaintiff. After stating she would produce them in a few days, the Defendants did not hear back from the Plaintiff despite both formal and informal requests. Mitchell[…]
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Responding to discovery requests requires analyzing what is actually being asked for in the request. The first step of analysis entails developing search strategies for date ranges, key words, and other search criterion to identify responsive discovery. Requesting parties have to prove a production is unreasonable or inadequate in order[…]
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Determining the scope of discovery is of critical importance for defining a party’s duty to preserve duty. Parties legitimately can fight over whether one party’s preservation strategy is too narrow. Magistrate Judge Erin Wilder-Doomes decided this issue in a securities and unfair trade practices case in Louisiana arising from a[…]
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Discovery requires thoughtful planning on how to search for electronically stored information, conferring with the opposing party on search methodologies, and following stipulations on designating ESI as Attorney-Eyes Only (AEO). The Plaintiffs in Youngevity Int’l Corp. v. Smith produced 4.2 million search term hits, designated them all AEO, and failed to[…]
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“eDiscovery Day” is December 1 in recognition of the effective dates for the 2006 and 2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Over the last decade, eDiscovery has dramatically impacted how attorneys conduct document review. In my guest post for Everlaw on When Has a Producing Party Completed[…]
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In a products liability MDL case over an implanted filter in medical devices, the Defendants sought the production of social media posts in native file format. The Plaintiffs had produced the social media as PDFs and had privacy concerns with producing native files. In re Cook Med., Inc., 2017 U.S.[…]
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The first foreign language lawsuit I worked on as an attorney was an international price fixing case with defendants in Japan and Germany. Boxes of printed discovery were produced in Japanese. This raised serious issues of how to find documents that supported our causes of action and prepare for depositions.[…]
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In my new guest post for Everlaw, Instead of Fighting About Discovery, Set up First and Second Pass Review to Produce Responsive ESI, I analyze the case of Bird v. Wells Fargo Bank, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 49675 (E.D. Cal. March 31, 2017) and discuss best practices for document review. Many[…]
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