\u201cIn the court’s experience, scanned PDFs, as opposed to\u00a0electronically-produced\u00a0PDFs, are not reasonably usable.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Magistrate Judge Paul M. Warner<\/p>\n

In Accessdata\u00a0Corp. v. Alste\u00a0Techs. Gmbh, <\/em>2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4566 (D. Utah Jan. 21, 2010), a United States based company that produces forensic software used in e-Discovery, entered into a contract with a German company.\u00a0 Litigation ensued when a contract dispute broke out and e-Discovery turned into a war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Form of Production Einwand\u00a0und <\/strong>Angriff<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>The German Defendants produced electronically stored information as hard copies and converted the scanned images to PDF\u2019s.\u00a0 The Plaintiffs claimed the production was not reasonably searchable.\u00a0 Accessdata Corp.<\/em> at *16.<\/p>\n

The Defendants claimed the production was in a \u201creasonably useable form,\u201d because they printed all the ESI as paper and had it scanned as PDF\u2019s.\u00a0 Accessdata Corp.<\/em>\u00a0at *17.\u00a0 Adding insult to injury, the Defendant further claimed it would be\u00a0unduly burdensome\u00a0and expensive to somehow \u201cfix\u201d the ESI so it was searchable. \u00a0Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

The Plaintiff, perhaps feeling a little like General Patton, cited Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule rule 34(b)(2)(E)(ii), which states that electronically stored information should be produced “in a form or forms in which [they are] ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably useable form.” Accessdata Corp.<\/em> at *17.<\/p>\n

e-Discovery Untergang<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Court channeled General Eisenhower in its ruling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Court ruled the Defendant was required to produce its electronically stored information \u201c\u2026in a form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form.” Accessdata Corp.<\/em> at *18. citing Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(2)(E)(ii).<\/p>\n

The Court stated the previously produced electronically stored information was ordinarily maintained in an electronic format.\u00a0 Accessdata Corp.<\/em>\u00a0at *18.\u00a0 Converting ESI to paper and then scanning to PDF\u2019s destroys searchable features of the inherently searchable electronically stored information.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Court noted that the option to produce in a \u201creasonably useable form\u201d does not give a party free rein to destroy the searchable functions of the e-Discovery.\u00a0 Accessdata Corp.<\/em>\u00a0at *18.\u00a0\u00a0 If ESI is ordinarily maintained in a searchable form, the information \u201cshould not be produced in a form that removes or significantly degrades this feature.\u201d Accessdata Corp.<\/em> at *18, citing Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b) Advisory Comm. Notes to 2006 Amendment.<\/p>\n

As the Court concluded, \u201cIn the court’s experience, scanned PDFs, as opposed to\u00a0electronically-produced\u00a0PDFs, are not reasonably usable.\u201d Accessdata Corp.<\/em> at *18-19.<\/p>\n

The Defendant was thusly ordered to re-produce electronically stored information in native file format or an electronically-generated PDF format. \u00a0Accessdata Corp.<\/em> at *19.<\/p>\n

Bow Tie Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Producing electronically stored information as scanned paper in PDF format is about as defensible as the Maginot Line (especially when your opponent\u00a0makes electronic evidence software).\u00a0 Parties are ill-served by playing such discovery games, unless they want to be on the losing end of a motion to compel that reads like the Treaty of Versailles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn the court’s experience, scanned PDFs, as opposed to\u00a0electronically-produced\u00a0PDFs, are not reasonably usable.\u201d Magistrate Judge Paul M. Warner In Accessdata\u00a0Corp. v. Alste\u00a0Techs. Gmbh, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4566 (D. Utah Jan. 21, 2010), a United States based company that produces forensic software used in e-Discovery, entered into a contract with[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35,40,44,45,46,53,55,89,106,107],"tags":[163,205,208,225],"class_list":["post-2426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discovery","category-e-discovery","category-electronically-stored-information","category-email","category-esi","category-foreign-discovery","category-form-of-production","category-native-file","category-reasonably-useable-form","category-request-for-production","tag-e-discovery","tag-motion-to-compel","tag-native-file-production","tag-request-for-production"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7kqH7-D8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bowtielaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bowtielaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bowtielaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bowtielaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bowtielaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bowtielaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bowtielaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bowtielaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bowtielaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}