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electronic discovery
Form of Production of Electronic Data (Continued)

In re Instinet Group, Inc., 2005 Del. Ch. LEXIS 195 (Del. Ct. Chan. Dec. 14, 2005).
After the case settled, the court awarded the plaintiffs $450,000 in attorney fees and costs upon finding that the cost to convert electronic documents into hard copy form so that it could be reviewed by attorneys was not justified.

Williams v. Sprint/United Mgmt. Co., 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21966 (D. Kan. Sept. 29, 2005).
Based on the Sedona Principles, the court found that, "the producing party should produce the electronic documents with their meta data intact, unless that party timely objects to production of meta data, the parties agree that the meta data should not be produced, or the producing party requests a protective order" after it was determined that a party had electronically removed meta data from documents it had been ordered to produce.

Cardenas v. Dorel Juvenile Group, Inc., 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18766 (D. Kan. Aug. 31, 2005).
Electronic information, including email, was not produced "as they are kept in the usual course of business" within the meaning of F. R. Civ. P. 34, although counsel had asserted that documents were produced in the form in which they were kept in the normal course of business. Based on counsels' sanctionable conduct, they were required to pay the opposing party's reasonable costs to compel further discovery.

William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. The Gillette Company, 2005 Mass. Super. LEXIS 248 (Mass. Sup. Ct. May 19, 2005).
The court denied an order in which all hard drives, databases, backup tapes, backup systems, servers, archives, and email was sought due to the extent and intricacies associated with the effort to recover the materials.

In re Plastics Additives Antitrust Litigation, 004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23989 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 29, 2004).
Parties had to provide all transactional data in electronic format, to the extent reasonably feasible, but defendants were not required to provide technical assistance to help plaintiffs understand and make use of the data defendants produced.

Zakre v. Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6026 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 9, 2004).
Court ruled that evidence provided in text-searchable and readable format was a sufficient form of production and did not require an index after Plaintiff requested that defendant analyze two CD-ROMs containing over 200,000 emails for responsive documents. Based on the Sedona Principles and In re Lorazepam, as well as Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b), the court found that defendant was not required to provide plaintiff anything more than a searchable CD-ROM.

In re Verisign Sec. Litig., 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22467 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 10, 2004).
A magistrate ordered defendant to produce electronic information in PST form, which was the native format and the manner in which the documents were stored during the normal course of business. The court affirmed the order regardless of defendant's claims it would be unduly burdensome to convert the documents back to PST as they had been preparing to produce them in TIFF form.

Northern Crossarm Co., Inc. v. Chemical Specialties, Inc., 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5381 (W.D. Wis. Mar. 3, 2004).
Defendant supplied plaintiff with 65,000 email messages in hard copy format and plaintiff filed a motion to require defendant to reproduce these email messages in electronic form. Defendant contended that the documents provided to the plaintiffs were the same ones reviewed by its own counsel and that it would be unreasonably expensive and time consuming to reproduce the email messages in electronic form. The court ruled in defendant's favor and stated that no party may compel the other to produce evidence in its preferred format.

Samide v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, 773 N.Y.S.2d 116 (Mar. 8, 2004).
The trial court ordered defendant to produce computer hard drives and their contents for an in camera inspection, which the appellate court modified to only require the defendant to produce hard copies of the email messages that related to the allegations.

Ranta v. Ranta, 2004 Conn. Super. LEXIS 462 (Conn. Super. Ct. February 25, 2004).
In this divorce case, the court ordered the wife to turn her laptop computer over to the court clerk and the husband was ordered to both replace the computer and purchase computer storage devices.

Super Film of Am., Inc. v. UCB Films, Inc., 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2855 (D. Kan. Feb. 9, 2004).
The court rejected the party's claim that it did not possess the expertise to extract electronic documents requested in discovery and orders the party to produce the documents in electronic form within thirty days.

In re Honeywell Int'l, Inc. Securities Litigation, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20602 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 18, 2003).
A third party was ordered to re-produce relevant documents in electronic form after they had already provided them in hard copy form as it was determined that the documents were stored in electronic form through the normal course of business. The court denied a request for email and other electronic documents based on the fact that the request was overly broad.

United States v. First Data & Concord EFS, Inc., 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23458 (D.C. October 31, 2003).
Limits regarding the discovery of electronic documents and the manner in which those documents must be produced were set by the court.

Cobell v. Norton, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12833 (D. D.C. July 28, 2003).
Court ordered defendant to disconnect computer systems from the Internet to ensure data would not be overwritten after defendant requested to reproduce necessary email messages from paper records rather than from the backup tapes themselves.

Zhou v. Pittsburg State Univ., 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6398 (D. Kan. Feb. 5, 2003).
After defendant produce information that had been compiled by hand and submitted in typewritten form, the court ordered that defendant must produce the actual computer-generated documents.

Anti-Monopoly, Inc. v. Hasbro, Inc., 1995 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16355, 1995-2 Trade Cas. (CCH) P71218 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 3, 1995).
In this antitrust case, plaintiff moved to compel defendant to produce certain data processing files in their native electronic form, although they had already been submitted in paper form. Defendant maintained that they had satisfied their discovery obligations and that, as the documents had already been destroyed in their electronic form, producing them would require defendant to recreate documents, incurring high costs. The court found that defendant was not relieved from producing documents in electronic form solely because said documents had been provided in paper form, stating "The law is clear that data in computerized form is discoverable even if paper 'hard copies' of the information have been produced…[T]oday it is black letter law that computerized data is discoverable if relevant." However, the court withheld ruling on defendants' contention that the rules did not require them to essentially recreate the electronic files and found that the parties must come to a mutually satisfactory manner for exchanging the electronic documents.

 

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