Miller, Jr., Robert L., United States District Judge
To filter privileged and non-responsive documents out of the original 19.5 million, defendants first implemented a round of keyword searches, then utilized predictive coding, and finally review by eight contract attorneys. Defendants then suggested additional search terms and offered to produce the remaining relevant and non-privileged documents resultant from those new searches. Plaintiffs declined this offer and moved to compel defendants to restart production using predictive coding, and not keyword searches, during the first round of discovery. At the time of the case, defendants had spent over a million dollars on discovery and expected to spend nearly three million to complete the process. Both parties admitted restarting discovery would substantially increase these costs.
The primary issue here was not whether predictive coding is a better way to filter ESI than keyword searching, as proposed by plaintiffs. The issue was whether defendant satisfied its discovery obligations under FRCP Rule 26(b). The court held that defendant had done so. Plaintiffs request that defendants restart discovery using predictive coding did not comply with the proportionality standard of Rule 26(b). Complying with plaintiffs request would have been virtually cost prohibitive and likely would have produced a comparatively low number of responsive documents. The court denied plaintiffs’ motion finding that “even in light of the needs of the hundreds of plaintiffs in this case, the very large amount in controversy, the parties' resources, the importance of the issues at stake, and the importance of this discovery in resolving the issues, I can't find that the likely benefits of the discovery proposed by the Steering Committee equals or outweighs its additional burden on, and additional expense to [defendant].”
Counsel
Thomas R. Anapol PHV, Anapol Schwarts, Philadelphia, PA, W. Mark Lanier PHV, Lanier Law Firm PC, Houston, TX, Frederick R. Hovde, Robert T. Dassow, Hovde Dassow & Deets LLC, Indianapolis, IN, for Plaintiffs.Erin Linder Hanig, John David Ladue, Ladue Curran & Kuehn LLC, South Bend, IN, Jenya M. Moshkovich PHV, John D. Winter PHV, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, New York, NY, for Defendants.