First, the parties disagree about how the cost of the discovery plaintiffs seek from defendants should be apportioned. Second, the parties disagree over the scope of discovery relating to the production of entire electronic databases Forest possesses. Finally, the parties disagree over whether plaintiffs should be allowed to perform their own forensic examination of plaintiffs' computer hard drives, or whether an independent forensic consultant should perform the analysis.

At this time, the parties anticipate that, as instructed, they will file briefs on October 27, 2006, outlining their positions on those three issues. While other potential areas of disagreement exist and further disagreements could arise as the parties add detail to and implement the agreements they have reached, the parties anticipate that the November 13, 2006, hearing before the Court will be limited to the three areas of disagreement outlined above.

The parties agree as follows with respect to written discovery and document management plan issues:

This Order shall govern discovery in those actions transferred to this Court by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (the “Panel”) pursuant to the Panel's February 16, 2006, order. It also shall govern all related actions originally filed in this Court or transferred or removed to this Court.

This Order also shall govern the discovery in any tag-along actions transferred to this Court by the Panel pursuant to Rule 12 of the Rules of Procedure of the Panel on the filing of the final transfer order by the Clerk of this Court and any related actions subsequently filed in this Court or otherwise transferred or removed to this Court. The above-described actions will be referred to collectively in this Order as “the MDL Litigation.”

Plaintiffs shall preserve all discoverable information on any computers or other electronic media within their possession, custody, or control. Plaintiffs shall preserve discoverable information on any computers plaintiffs or plaintiffs' decedents owned or to which they had access before the suicide or suicide attempt. Plaintiffs will advise defendants if the person who attempted or committed suicide routinely used a computer which the plaintiff contends is not within the plaintiff's possession, custody or control. In such case, the plaintiff will provide defendants with information sufficient to identify the person or entity with possession, custody and control of the computer.

Wherever possible, plaintiffs shall preserve any and all hard drives owned or used by plaintiffs and plaintiffs' decedents within the year prior to the suicide or suicide attempt. Preservation of such computers/hard drives shall be completed as soon as possible (if it has not been done already). Plaintiffs also shall, wherever possible, preserve all cellular telephones and text or other instant messaging devices (and related documentation such as bills, etc.) owned or used by plaintiffs and plaintiffs' decedents within the year before the suicide or suicide attempt.

*2 Responsive computers/hard drives produced by plaintiffs will be imaged and analyzed. The imaging and analysis shall be performed pursuant to an agreed forensic examination protocol for personal computers. Who will conduct the imaging and analysis and apportionment of the cost of the imaging and analysis shall be addressed by the parties in their October 27, 2006, briefs.

The parties agree that the volume of information requested by plaintiffs necessitates a rolling production. The parties expect that defendants will make a production every 30 to 60 days.

The parties agree that responsive electronically stored information (“ESI”) will be collected by defendants from defendants' active IT environment. The parties agree that absent some exceptional circumstance and a demonstration by plaintiffs of some substantial need, defendants shall not be required to restore any backup tapes (specifically including but not limited to the 35 back-up tapes defendants made on April 29, 2005, specifically for purposes of this litigation). Defendants shall preserve those 35 backup tapes and may resume otherwise recycling backup tapes.

The parties agree that ESI shall be collected on a custodial basis with the understanding that certain specific departmental file shares may be included in the collection. Defendants will provide plaintiffs with organizational charts for pertinent departments to assist plaintiffs in identifying appropriate custodians. Defendants reserve the right to object to production of any custodian's ESI.

For individual custodians, ESI shall be collected from the following:

In the event a custodian also possesses relevant data on such personal custodian's own desktop or laptop hard drive that is not backed up to defendants' servers, defendants also shall collect that data.

Once the ESI has been collected from those sources, an agreed upon search shall be run across the ESI to reduce the scope of information to be produced or reviewed for production. The parties agree to work cooperatively to develop a threshold search broad enough to retrieve relevant information but narrow enough to reduce in a meaningful fashion the volume of information to be prepared for production. The parties agree that subsequent searches may be performed to further eliminate non-responsive, irrelevant information or to further refine the production (with the parties reserving their right to object to any subsequent search).

Once the agreed upon threshold search has been run, defendants will review the documents for privilege, confidentiality, relevancy and related issues. Plaintiffs agree to prioritize the custodians from whom they seek ESI and other discovery to allow defendants sufficient time to review the custodian's ESI and other information before any such custodian is deposed.

*3 All documents to be produced shall be redacted in order to remove person-identifying information in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”), the E-Government Act of 2002 and other applicable state and federal statutes, rules and regulations. Relevant, responsive, non-privileged information will be produced to plaintiffs. The parties will continue to discuss how to handle redactions in otherwise relevant, responsive, non-privileged information.

Plaintiffs defer to defendants as to the method of production. Specifically, plaintiffs agree to take ESI produced by defendants in any format that generally is searchable and manageable (including in native file format or as single page TIFF images with ASCII Text that represents the textual content of the electronic document and the following, to the extent applicable, as metadata-author, recipient, date, subject line).

Plaintiffs' counsel agree that the method and scope of production made in this MDL Litigation also shall be sufficient in any cases any plaintiffs' counsel in this MDL Litigation are pursuing in state courts.

Defendants have collected and preserved hard copy documents relating to Celexa and Lexapro. All those documents, including the NDAs for Celexa and Lexapro, have been scanned and converted to TIFF images. In excess of 1,000,000 pages of information have been reviewed by defendants and are available for production, including both NDAs.

Plaintiffs have requested multiple databases from defendants. As set forth above, the parties disagree about the scope of discovery plaintiffs should be allowed to conduct in relation to defendants' databases.

Notwithstanding any provision set forth above, any party may apply to the Court for discovery relief, but only after first conferring in good faith with the other party to resolve any dispute, and after giving sufficient notice to be heard.