Plaintiff filed this employment discrimination action on November 20, 2017, and pursuant to the initial Scheduling Order, all fact discovery was to be completed by August 1, 2018. (ECF No. 16.) On July 11, 2018, at the parties' request, we issued an Amended Scheduling Order extending the fact discovery deadline to September 14, 2018, and the dispositive motion deadline to October 15, 2018. (ECF No. 25.) On August 31, 2018, at Plaintiff's request, the fact discovery and dispositive motion deadlines were extended again, to October 15, 2018 and November 15, 2018, respectively. (ECF No. 25.)

At issue in this Motion are certain Microsoft Word documents that apparently were created by and/or contain typewritten notes of Plaintiff's former supervisor, Amy Miller, and are titled: “45 Day Performance Improvement Plan CONFIDENTIAL-Revised”; “Job Description for Mary – Leadership Development Coordinator – with com”; “Mary Performance Examples”; “Mary Performance Examples - as of 818”; “MC PIP – v3”; “Performance Conversation – 0526”; “XX Day Performance Improvement Plan CONFIDENTIAL”; and “Mary – Review 2015.” (Pl.'s Opp. Ex. A.)

Defendant first produced the documents to Plaintiff on April 26, 2018. (Def.'s Mot. 3.) More than four months later, on August 30, 2018, Plaintiff, for the first time, asked Defendant to provide the metadata for the documents. (Pl.'s Opp. 4 (ECF page numbering); Mot. Ex. B.) “Metadata is imbedded information that describes the history, tracking, and management of an electronic document.” McSparran v. Com. of Pa., No. 13-1932, 2016 WL 687992, at *4 (M.D. Pa. Feb. 18, 2016) (citing Williams v. Sprint/United Mgmt. Co., 230 F.R.D. 640, 647 (D. Kan. 2005)); see also The Sedona Conference Glossary: E-Discovery & Digital Information Management (4th ed.), 15 Sedona Conf. J. 305, 330, 339, 357, 361 (2014) (containing definitions of “metadata,” “user created metadata,” “system generated metadata,” and “hidden files or data”). On September 4, 2018, Defendant produced the requested documents in “native [Microsoft Word] format” with the “corresponding metadata.” (Pl.'s Opp. 4.) On September 5, 2018, Plaintiff's counsel deposed Amy Miller, marked several of the documents as deposition exhibits, and asked her questions about some of the documents, including when certain documents or notes were created and whether they originated from a pre-existing template. (Miller Dep. 99-100, 122-32, 150-56, 249-52, Mot. Ex. C.)

On September 11, 2018, Plaintiff asked Defendant to re-produce the documents because Plaintiff was unable to access the metadata. (Pl.'s Opp. 4.) Defendant re-produced the native format documents with metadata on September 14, 2018. (Id.) However, according to Plaintiff, “[t]he format in which Defendant produced the [m]etadata was contained within the properties of the actual [n]ative [d]ocuments themselves and not in tangible form.” (Id.) Because the metadata “was not in a format that could be marked as an exhibit at trial,” Plaintiff downloaded the metadata onto Word documents. (Id.)

On September 26, 2018, almost two weeks after Defendant produced the native documents for the second time, Plaintiff asked Defendant to stipulate to the authenticity and admissibility of the “Metadata reports” prepared by Plaintiff. (Id. at 5-6; Pl.'s 9/26/18 email, Mot. Ex. B.) Defendant refused to stipulate “to the authenticity [or admissibility] of a document that it did not prepare or produce,” noting that “Defendant has no context or understanding of the specific purpose[s] for which Plaintiff might later seek to rely on the document or have it admitted into evidence.” (Def.'s 10/1/18 email, Mot. Ex. B.)

Plaintiff then demanded that Defandant “prepare/produce the [requested] metadata ... in a format that [Plaintiff] could mark as an exhibit.” (Pl.'s 10/1/18 email, Mot. Ex. B.) Defendant refused, noting that it had produced the requested documents with the metadata intact and would not create a new document to reflect metadata that was contained in the native format documents already produced. (Def.'s 10/2/18 email, Mot. Ex. B.) Plaintiff then noticed the deposition that is the subject of this Motion.

Under the circumstances outlined above, and for the reasons that follow, Plaintiff's unilaterally scheduled, eleventh hour Notice of Deposition will be quashed.

First, the deposition, if permitted, would require a further extension of the already twice-extended deadlines for fact discovery and dispositive motions. Plaintiff acknowledges as much in her opposition to Defendant's Motion, which seeks an Order requiring Defendant to produce a designee for the deposition “no later than October 26, 2018.” (Pl.'s Opp. 1.) See Koplove v. Ford Motor Co., 795 F.2d 15, 18 (3d Cir. 1986) (“[S]cheduling orders are at the heart of case management. If they can be disregarded without a specific showing of good cause, their utility will be severely impaired.”).

Second, the procedural history outlined above negates the existence of good cause for an extension to accommodate the requested deposition. Plaintiff had the documents at issue for more than four months before requesting the associated metadata. Then, after Defendant produced the documents with metadata for the second time—and even though the discovery deadline was looming—Plaintiff waited almost two weeks before raising an issue about the suitability of the metadata format.

Third, Plaintiff's claimed entitlement to a last-minute Rule 30(b)(6) deposition is premised on an erroneously expansive interpretation of Defendant's discovery obligations. Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34, the party requesting electronically stored information (“ESI”) “may specify the form or forms in which [ESI] is to be produced.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(1)(C). With regard to the production of ESI, Rule 34 provides: “(ii) If a request does not specify a form for producing [ESI], a party must produce it in a form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form or forms; and (iii) A party need not produce the same [ESI] in more than one form.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(2)(E) (emphasis added); see also McSparran, 2016 WL 687992, at *4 (declining to require that plaintiff “redo document production in response to Defendants' belated request for metadata”); Romero v. Allstate Ins. Co., 271 F.R.D. 96, 106 (E.D. Pa. 2010) (“Plaintiffs are not entitled to duplicate prior discovery requests, ... requesting metadata ... [not] previously sought....”). Moreover, the requirement that ESI be produced in the form in which it is ordinarily maintained, or in reasonably usable form, does not obligate a responding party to stipulate to the accuracy of metadata or to create a metadata exhibit “in tangible form” for use by its adversary.

Finally, it is unlikely that the lay testimony of a Rule 30(b)(6) designee would resolve any issues regarding the meaning or accuracy of the metadata. See, e.g., The Sedona Principles: Best Practices, Recommendations & Principles for Addressing Electronic Document Production (3d ed.), Cmt. 12.a., 19 Sedona Conf. J. 171 (noting that “[a] native file format contains application metadata that may not always be contextually accurate”); Pearson v. U.S. Bank Nat. Ass'n, No. 13-889, 2014 WL 4163020, at *17 (D. Minn. Aug. 21, 2014) (rejecting plaintiff's attorney's opinion about metadata because it was not competent expert testimony and offered conclusions that were speculative, “especially in light of the common understanding that ‘creation dates’ in metadata may be altered by copying a document or moving it to a new location (e.g., ‘save as’ function on a word processor)”).