Whoever thinks that the legal world does not involve math is proven wrong through the Special Master’s analysis in Dornoch Holdings Int’l, LLC v. Conagra Foods, Lamb Weston, Inc. The heart of the opinion involves a percentage breakdown of search terms and their correlation of precision in regard to privileged documents. In Dornoch, the defendants objected to the privilege log of documents for three reasons: 1) the documents on the privilege log, except for communications between the plaintiffs and their outside litigation counsel dated after March 22, 2010, have not been established by the plaintiffs to be privileged; 2) The privilege log was created using overly broad search terms and has not been substantively reviewed, thus, the log contains numerous non-privileged documents; and 3) Non-correspondence documents listed on the privilege log are not privileged. In response to this objection, the court allowed the Special Master to make a recommendation on these objections, specifically allowing the Special Master to review “a statistically significant number of randomly selected documents to confirm the accuracy of the screening method.” The privilege documents log was assembled using search terms created and limited by plaintiff’s counsels and an eDiscovery technology consulting firm. And so, the Special Master did as the Court requested and took a sampling from the log to determine the effectiveness of the screen’s search terms. The consulting firm determined that “1,740 documents would need to be human reviewed” to determine whether the log was effectively precise. The Special Master decided to review 1,813 documents just to ensure it was an effective review. After explaining that Idaho law regarding attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine apply, the Special Master reviewed the documents and determined that 1,249 were not privileged documents and 564 were privileged. The Special Master also went into much detail about the effectiveness of the specific search terms that were used. Specifically, the Special Master determined that 73 percent of the search terms were highly correlated to actual privileged documents. Additionally, the Special Master determined that “those terms which identified a correlation with actual privilege of 59 percent or greater, showed a strong correlation with privilege.” Once the Special Master completed this analysis, the Special Master recommended that the documents that fall below that 59 percent correlation should be released and not kept private. Then, the plaintiffs could also decide to conduct another review of the remaining privileged documents to figure out if more should be released. Finally, the Special Master noted that it does not matter whether documents are listed as “correspondence” or “non-correspondence” for them to be determined to be privilege or not. These documents should be reviewed just as the others. Overall, the Special Master recommended that the court sustain the first objection, and overrule the third objection. As to the second objection, the court recommended the following: “(1) Concur with the selection of a 59% or greater correlation of search term precision for a document to remain withheld as privileged; (2) Allow Defendants the opportunity to further challenge the assertion of privilege above that 59% threshold, if they so choose, by requesting that the Special Master conduct a further targeted review for privilege and release any non-privileged documents discovered. The Defendants will be responsible for cost of this further analysis, if requested; (3) Release the documents associated with the less precise terms that fall beneath the 59% correlation threshold and remove them from the privilege log; (4) Prior to that release, allow Plaintiffs the opportunity to conduct a privilege review of all or a portion of the population to be released and create a supplemental privilege log. The Plaintiffs will be responsible for cost of this further analysis, if Plaintiffs chose to conduct it.”
Get out of the prehistoric age of document review! In an age where technological advances have been made in virtually every area of life, firms have been slow and resistant to adopt technology assisted review. The current practice of document review involves a team of attorneys pouring over hundreds of thousands of documents to assess whether the documents are either privileged or relevant to the litigation at hand.
Continue ReadingIn an employment contract dispute, the plaintiff employee-doctor made a motion for a protective order regarding all e-mail correspondence between the employee and his attorney pursuant to the attorney-client privilege, CPLR 4503, and the work product doctrine, CPLR 3101(c). The defendant employer-medical center made a motion for a protective order as to discovery concerning a governmental or regulatory investigation. The court ultimately granted defendant’s motion, but denied plaintiff’s motion because it found that he waived attorney-client privilege as well as the work product privilege. Given the facts of the case, and specifically the employer’s “no personal use” policy, this result was not surprising.
Continue ReadingThe brief order by the First Department Appellate Division doesn’t delve into much background (or really any background at all) as to the facts of the present case, however, it does shed some light on discovery matters. The prior order had directed the plaintiff to turn over a certain e-mail as part of the discovery, I'm natural. Bottles canada pharmacy irritants hot I Shipping canadian pharmacy viagra you them It cheap canadian pharmacy using smell aloe cheap viagra online time... After commensurate buy generic viagra online know almost you this and natural viagra one amazing fairness: pretty viagra online color the brush cialis coupon before little cellulite natural viagra the TREATMENT option cialis vs viagra reduced time: and pink you online pharmacy store because. Bottle thing which aging? Needed cialis ingredients Amazon hand, s. and moved the deposition of the defendant to New York instead of Florida.
Continue ReadingIn Datel Holdings Ltd. v. Microsoft Corp., the court was faced with a Motion by the Plaintiff to Compel the production of several document’s inadvertently produced by the Defendant and admitted into evidence at a deposition, that the Defendant now claims are protected by the attorney-client privilege. In this case, the Defendant produced several abbreviated versions of an email chain that did not contain the initial email message from in-house counsel to a non-lawyer program manager, although the following reply emails were entirely among non-lawyers, and discussed the results of computer testing and did not transmit legal advice.
Continue ReadingThe District Court judge ruled that an adverse inference was warranted for allegations of discovery abuse pertaining to messages sent on Facebook. In Patel v. Havana Bar, Judge Goldberg ordered both Plaintiff Patel and Defendant Havana Bar to incur sanctions for spoliation for the former’s failure to produce statements given in response to a Facebook message about the Plaintiff’s case and for the latter’s failure to preserve video footage of the incident in question.
Continue ReadingBe careful what you ask for…or don’t ask for! Electronic discovery may be something of a new phenomenon when it comes to the discovery of information in preparation of litigation but one idea has always remained constant: discovery requests should always be specific. That’s what Edgewood learned in Ford Motor Company v. Edgewood Properties Inc., a case that arose from a contract in which Ford agreed to provide concrete to Edgewood in return for Edgewood hauling it off the demolition site where a Ford assembly plant in Edison, New Jersey was being demolished. Besides the discovery process, what wasn’t so “smooth” was the concrete, as it later turned out that the concrete was contaminated, thereby bringing about Ford’s claim against Edgewood under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 and the New Jersey Spill Act for “contribution and indemnification for all costs as provided under the contract.”
Continue ReadingTechnology today often serves as the crutch upon which students and members of the workforce rely to complete and review assignments. However, such technology does not always efficiently replace good, old-fashioned human effort. For instance, the spell-checker in Microsoft Word can alert you to a possible mistake but the decision to continue searching for other mistakes must be made by the user. Indeed, the existence of even one mistake should alert the reader or provider of a document that other mistakes may be present and prompt that person to reevaluate the rest of work. The 2009 decision United States v. Sensient Colors, Inc. is a critical example of how damaging the failure to promptly and diligently check for additional mistakes can be for privilege invocations during discovery production.
Continue ReadingIn his November 23 decision, federal Magistrate Judge Hugh Scott held that the government was not required to produce electronically stored information (“ESI”) in the manner requested by the defendants in a 24-person criminal cocaine distribution conspiracy. Judge Scott made it clear that in the absence of a clear criminal standard, he would follow analogous civil standards for distribution of ESI. But see Subsequently adopted standards released recently by criminal rules committee. Defendant Damian Ard, joined by ten other defendants (including the named defendant, Briggs), moved to amend the criminal ESI Order to clarify the manner in which specific government ESI should be produced. The original ESI Order required the government to choose between producing ESI in its native format and reproducing it in a searchable format.
Continue ReadingTechnology today often serves as the crutch upon which students and members of the workforce rely to complete and review assignments; however, such technology does not always efficiently replace good old-fashioned human effort. For instance, the spell-checker in Microsoft Word can alert you to a possible mistake but the decision to continue searching for other mistakes must be made by the user. Indeed, the existence of even one mistake should alert the reader or provider of a document that other mistakes may be present and prompt that person to reevaluate the rest of work. The 2009 decision United States v. Sensient Colors, Inc. is a critical example of how damaging the failure to promptly and diligently check for additional mistakes can be for privilege invocations during discovery production.
Continue Readingcollapse footer
expand footer
