Reasonably Useable Form

Excel-ing at eDiscovery (Guest Post on Everlaw)

Many litigation support professionals think Excel files are the bane of discovery. Attorneys with a fixation of wanting a Bates Stamp on electronically stored information demand Excel files be converted from their native application to a static image, causing one Excel file to explode into a 500 page PDF. To[…]

Scanning Paper Makes the Production ESI And Not a Document

April 17, 2014 Josh Gilliland Electronically Stored Information, ESI, Form of Production, Reasonably Useable Form, Request for Production

Anderson Living Trust v. WPX Energy Prod., LLC, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 31025, 3-4 (D.N.M. Mar. 6, 2014), is a detailed review of production requirements under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 34(b)(2)(E). The crux of the case centered on whether scanning paper documents to PDF’s made the discovery “electronically[…]

Hands-on eDiscovery: California Seminar on Responding to Discovery Requests

February 28, 2013 Josh Gilliland California Electronic Discovery Act, Processing, Reasonably Useable Form, Request for Production, Translation Into A Reasonably Useable Form

I had the good fortune to organize a seminar on responding to electronic discovery requests for the Santa Clara County Bar Association’s Civil Practice Committee on February 27, 2013. However, this seminar was different from other eDiscovery CLE’s, because the attendees spent a full hour conducting searches for responsive ESI[…]

Printing ESI & Scanning It Is Not OK

January 27, 2012 Josh Gilliland Discovery, Electronically Stored Information, Reasonably Accessible, Reasonably Useable Form, Request for Production

In Indep. Mktg. Group v. Keen, the Defendant-Requesting Party requested the corporate Plaintiff conduct targeted searches with specific key words on specific custodians on the Plaintiff’s server. Indep. Mktg. Group v. Keen, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7702 (M.D. Fla. Jan. 24, 2012). The Plaintiff produced one multiple page PDF without[…]

Smile for the Discovery Production

January 20, 2012 Josh Gilliland e-Discovery, Reasonably Useable Form, Request for Production, Translation Into A Reasonably Useable Form

In a dispute between a photographer and an educational textbook publisher, the Plaintiff sough the production of a definition list to the Defendants’ database abbreviations. Bean v. John Wiley & Sons, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4900, 1-3 (D. Ariz. Jan. 17, 2012). The Defendants’ sales, printing and distribution database was[…]

Producing Excel Spreadsheets as Tiffs

October 19, 2011 Josh Gilliland e-Discovery, Form of Production, Native File, Reasonably Useable Form

A Plaintiff produced Excel spreadsheets in TIFF format. As one could expect, the Defendant brought a motion to compel in native file format faster than you can sort a column in ascending order. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. v. Seamaster Logistics, Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 117922 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 12,[…]

Form of Production: (Almost) Anyway You Want It

August 17, 2011 Josh Gilliland Discovery, e-Discovery, Electronically Stored Information, Reasonably Accessible, Reasonably Useable Form, Request for Production

A Plaintiff in an age discrimination case requested ESI be produced in native format. Linnebur v. United Tel. Ass’n, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88456 (D. Kan. Aug. 10, 2011). The Defendants did not assert any objections, but produced the responsive ESI as PDF’s. Linnebur, at 3. The ESI at issue[…]

Exotic Apples: Solutions in Collecting & Processing Apple ESI

August 15, 2011 Josh Gilliland Discovery, e-Discovery, Electronically Stored Information, ESI, Initial Disclosures, Reasonably Accessible, Reasonably Useable Form, Request for Production, Supplemental Disclosures

My friend Charlie Kaupp at Digital Strata brought the following issue to me: There is an increasingly prevalent amount of Apple ESI found in corporate environments, especially among executives, engineering, and marketing groups. Most review platforms do not handle large portions of Apple ESI, including: Mac email (Entourage, Outlook 2011,[…]

Bates Numbering ESI & Other Dates with a Recycle Bin

March 28, 2011 Josh Gilliland e-Discovery, Electronically Stored Information, ESI, Form of Production, Meet & Confer, Metadata, Native File, Reasonably Useable Form, Request for Production, TIFF

There are battles that do not make sense. This is one of those cases. In a civil dispute over fraudulent investments, the Plaintiff brought a motion to compel the Defendant to “Bates Label” electronically stored information in native file format, because the local Discovery Practices Handbook required Bates numbering of[…]

A PDF Production is Not How a Native File is Ordinarily Maintained

December 17, 2010 Josh Gilliland e-Discovery, Electronically Stored Information, ESI, Native File, Reasonably Useable Form, Request for Production

In a production dispute over native files, Magistrate Judge Paul Cherry shows us (again) that producing native files as non-searchable PDF’s does not comply with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 34. Jannx Med. Sys. v. Methodist Hosps., Inc., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 122574 (N.D. Ind. Nov. 17, 2010). Federal Rule[…]