e-discovery 2.0

Picking five out of the sea of electronic discovery cases isn’t as easy as it sounds.  Sure, a few, like our “Case of the Year” will be no-brainers, but others aren’t as clear cut.  And, they’re certainly open to debate.  But, in my humble opinion here’s THE list, counting down David Letterman style:

5) Mancia v. Mayflower Textile Servs. Co., 2008 WL 4595175 (D. Md. Oct. 15, 2008)

If there ever was an opinion written by a judge to make a larger societal point, Mancia was certainly it.  Judge Paul Grimm, who’ll appear on this list in another slot as well, has clearly taken the mantle from Judge Scheindlin as the leading electronic discovery jurist.  He’d heretofore authored a number of significant opinions in this area, including Hobson and Thompson. Now, in Mancia he used a garden variety discovery dispute, which was typically rife with boilerplate objections and other obstreperous tactics, to highlight the Sedona Conference’s Cooperation Proclamation.

The lasting takeaway from the opinion is the notion that “[c]ourts repeatedly have noted the need for attorneys to work cooperatively to conduct electronic discovery, and sanctioned lawyers and parties for failing to do so.” To support this notion he cites the Sedona Conference Proclamation and the little used FRCP 26(g).  This opinion is noteworthy because it gives precedent to bolster the Sedona initiative and should provide a ready citation for all those counsel who aren’t getting the level of cooperation they need from the opposition.  It remains to be seen if other judges will follow suit, but this could be the beachhead for a more cooperative electronic discovery process in 2009 and beyond.

4) Flagg v. City of Detroit, 252 F.R.D. 346 (E.D. Mich. 2008)

Flagg highlights the growing need to reconcile the electronic discovery landscape, which typically focuses somewhat myopically on email, with the larger informational trends which are now categorized by the use of blogs, social networking sites, instant messaging, and text messaging.  Flagg was one of the first to determine text messages (e.g., messages exchanged among certain officials and employees of the City of Detroit via city-issued text messaging devices) were discoverable under the standards of FRCP 26(b)(1).  The holding further demonstrated the challenges of conducting electronic discovery across information systems that mix personal information with business communications.  This type of information commingling will continue to escalate, causing significant long term electronic discovery challenges due to thorny privacy, privilege and policy implications.

3) Rhoads Indus., Inc. v. Bldg. Materials Corp. of Am., 2008 WL 4916026 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 14, 2008)

Rhoads is one of the first cases post Federal Rule of Evidence (FRE) 502, which recently created a national standard (versus the previous split in jurisdictions) and now states a “middle ground” for the determining of inadvertent disclosure during electronic discovery.  The key provision is (b)(2) which provides protection only if “the holder of the privilege or protection took reasonable steps to prevent disclosure.”  So, Rhoads took that “reasonableness” question head on in a scenario where the plaintiff Rhoads admittedly (yet inadvertently) produced over eight hundred privileged, electronic documents.  The decision is significant because it used the five-factor test stated in Fidelity, but put an undue weighting on the final test which was: “whether the overriding interests of justice would be served by relieving the party of its errors.”   This approach potentially threatens the development of sound case law that will be necessary to help the deployment of FRE 502 into practice because it casts too much uncertainty with its weighting of “fairness” (a problematically vague notion) in the analysis.  It will be interesting to see if/how this approach is subsequently adopted as we enter the New Year.

2) Qualcomm Inc. v. Broadcom Corp., 2008 WL 66932 (S.D. Cal. Jan. 7, 2008)

This for many was the case of the year given it’s far reaching implications for the legal community.  Some have argued that this isn’t an e-discovery abuse case per se, but more of an example of discovery abuses that just so happened to be centered around ESI.  In either case, the fraud, resulting cover-up, sanctions, ethical issues and privilege discussions made for insightful and thought provoking reading throughout 2008.  The lasting takeaway from Qualcomm appears to be the implications of not just committing discovery abuses, but the failure of having a well thought out e-discovery plan that is actively executed/monitored by outside counsel.  The resulting tension between outside counsel, inside counsel and the internal IT department may continue to escalate if more cases like this make the headlines in 2009.

1)  E-Discovery Case of the Year: Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc., 2008 WL 2221841 (D. Md. May 29, 2008)

Judge Grimm’s hallmark opinion has had the legal community buzzing over the past several months and the reason appears pretty straight forward.  In Victor Stanley Grimm builds on the holdings in Seroquel, O’Keefe and Equity Analytics, to boldly cast doubt on a practice so routine that it’s literally shocked the legal community into reevaluation:

(“[D]etermining whether a particular search methodology, such as keywords, will or will not be effective certainly requires knowledge beyond the ken of a lay person (and a lay lawyer) . . . .”

The notion that electronic discovery search is beyond the ability of most attorneys has caused tremors within the litigation support community who had a long history of blindly receiving keywords from counsel, running them and turning back over the results – often blissfully unaware of the extent to which those keyword searches actually located relevant information.  Victor Stanley‘s analysis of the “reasonableness” of search protocols also has impact on the FRE 502 and therefore cements its place alongside other e-discovery “must reads” such as Zubulake and Morgan Stanley.

The cases above are my Top 5.  What additional cases do you think were important?  Please let me know by commenting on the cases you think shaped electronic discovery in 2008 and why.

Learn More On: Frcp Electronic discovery.

With the recent implementation of Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) 502 litigants have been waiting to see what kind of impact this rule will have in practice – particularly with the anticipated reduction of attorney review costs during electronic discovery.  In Rhoads Indus., Inc. v. Bldg. Materials Corp. of Am., 2008 WL 4916026 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 14, 2008) we see an early indication that things aren’t quite as clear as people had hoped.

In this breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation action plaintiff Rhoads admittedly (yet inadvertently) produced over eight hundred privileged, electronic documents during eDiscovery.  After returning the documents, Defendants filed a motion claiming that Rhoads waived privilege because:

• its production was careless,
• its response in seeking the return of the documents was delayed, and
• it failed to produce complete and accurate privilege logs.

The court began its analysis by focusing on FRE 502 which recently created a national standard (versus the previous split in jurisdictions) and now states a “middle ground” for the determining of inadvertent disclosure during eDiscovery.  The key provision being (b)(2) which provides protection if “the holder of the privilege or protection took reasonable steps to prevent disclosure.”

As the court began its legal analysis it quickly noted the similarity to Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc., which had “analogous facts” despite being decided pre-FRE 502.  Both Rhoads and Victor Stanley leveraged similarly the five-factor test stated in Fidelity which were:

1. the reasonableness of the precautions taken to prevent inadvertent disclosure in view of the extent of the document production,
2. the number of inadvertent disclosures,
3. the extent of the disclosure,
4. any delay in measures taken to rectify the disclosure, and
5. whether the overriding interests of justice would be served by relieving the party of its errors.

The Rhoads court indicated its belief that “the most appropriate approach is to first determine whether the producing party has at least minimally complied with the three factors stated in Rule 502, i.e., that the waiver was inadvertent, the party took reasonable steps to prevent disclosure, and attempted to rectify the error.”  Acknowledging that the reasonableness of Rhoads’ review was the crux of the dispute, the court then concluded, “that once the producing party has shown at least minimal compliance with the three factors in Rule 502, but ‘reasonableness’ is in dispute, the court should proceed to the traditional five factor test.”

Factor 1 (the reasonableness of the precautions)

Despite the unfortunate results, Rhoads actually started out on the right foot.  First, they recognized that with extensive electronic discovery on the horizon they needed an IT consultant to research software for the in-house processing and searching effort.  The consultant tested and then purchased a tool to perform the necessary electronic data searches, although it wasn’t clear how they selected that product or whether they reviewed any other similar solutions.

“The fact that Rhoads retained a consultant who recommended and used a fairly sophisticated screening device shows that Rhoads substantially complied with the following Explanatory Note to Rule 502: ‘A party that uses advanced analytical software applications and linguistic tools in screening for privilege and work product may be found to have taken “reasonable steps” to prevent inadvertent disclosure. The implementation of an efficient system of records management before litigation may also be relevant.’”

After picking out the software tool, the IT consultant identified a large volume of potentially responsive documents after consulting Rhoads’ attorneys to identify keyword searches intended to filter the privileged material and removed those documents from the group.  The search was run a second time to verify its accuracy.  Given the large volume of documents remaining even after removing materials hit by the privilege search, Rhoads’ counsel modified the original search terms and reduced the volume of potentially responsive documents to 78,000.   Rhoads’ counsel then manually reviewed a separate group of emails from specific accounts to identify and remove privileged documents, which were then added to separate privilege logs.

On the other side of the ledger, there were a number of things the court found lacking in Rhoads’ methodology, citing Victor Stanley, including a failure in crafting a viable search strategy: “Plaintiff produced documents that its limited search should have caught. Therefore Plaintiff not only failed to craft the right searches, but the searches it ran failed. Plaintiff has no explanation for this.  … Here there was no testing [read: no sampling] of the reliability or comprehensiveness of the keyword search. Plaintiff’s only testing of its search was to run the same search again.”

Factor 2 (The Number of Inadvertent Disclosures)

While 800 inadvertently produced documents was only 1-2% of the data set it still was a large number standing alone, especially compared to Victor Stanley, which had 165 at issue.  So, the court found that this issue favored the Defendants.

Factor 3 (The Extent of the Disclosure)

Read on.

Factor 4 (Any Delay in Measures Taken to Rectify the Disclosure)

The court skipped factor 3 and went instead to factor four, finding that this too favored Defendants.  Significantly the court found fault with the resources Plaintiff brought to bear on the issue and also noted that “Defendants had to bring Plaintiff’s error to its attention instead of Plaintiff catching its own mistake” (as in Victor Stanley).

Factor 5 (Fairness)

Now here’s where things get interesting.  Despite finding for the Defendants on the previous 4 (really 3) factors – meaning that they weren’t on balance “reasonable” – the court puts an unbalanced weighting on this final fairness factor:

“Although Rhoads took steps to prevent disclosure and to rectify the error, its efforts were, to some extent, not reasonable…. The most significant factor, …, is that Rhoads failed to prepare for the segregation and review of privileged documents sufficiently far in advance of the inevitable production of a large volume of documents.”

And yet, “I find that the fifth factor, the interest of justice, strongly favors Rhoads. Loss of the attorney-client privilege in a high-stakes, hard-fought litigation is a severe sanction and can lead to serious prejudice. … [D]enying these documents to Defendants is not prejudicial to Defendants because, in the first place, they have no right or expectation to any of Rhoads’ privileged communications.”

The judge went on to further shore up his over reliance on the “fairness” prong by taking a crack at Judge Grimm’s analysis in Victor Stanley: “I believe that Judge Grimm’s analysis reflects, to a more significant degree than I believe appropriate, application of hindsight, which should not carry much weight, if any, because no matter what methods an attorney employed, an after-the-fact critique can always conclude that a better job could have been done.”

Interesting….  It seems that Rhoads stands for a fairness weighted approach that effectively eviscerates the entire reasonableness analysis mandated by FRE 502 as applied in Victor Stanley and Fidelity.  It seems to me that waiver of privilege is always going to be a “severe sanction” leading to “serious prejudice.”  That’s why inadvertent disclosure is called the third rail of e-discovery.  But, if you want the newly articulated reasonableness standard to mean anything, the “fairness” prong can’t trump the rest of the analysis.

I’m sure this will play out in the near future, but it’s my guess that “reasonable” minds will prevail…