Upon the stipulation of the parties, the Court ORDERS as follows: 

1. This Order supplements all other discovery rules and orders. It streamlines Electronically Stored Information (“ESI”) production to promote a “just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of this action, as required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 1.”

2. This Order may be modified in the Court’s discretion or by written agreement of the parties. If the parties cannot resolve their disagreements regarding these modifications, the parties shall submit their competing proposals and a summary of their dispute.

3. As in all cases, costs may be shifted for disproportionate ESI production requests pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 26. Likewise, a party’s nonresponsive or dilatory discovery tactics are cost-shifting considerations.

4. A party’s meaningful compliance with this Order and efforts to promote efficiency and reduce costs will be considered in cost-shifting determinations.

5. The parties are expected to comply with the District’s E-Discovery Guidelines (“Guidelines”).

6. The parties agree to produce documents, to the extent reasonably possible, in the formats described in Appendix A to this Order. If particular documents cannot reasonably be produced in the formats described in Appendix A or warrant a different format, the parties will cooperate to arrange for the mutually acceptable production of such documents. The parties agree not to degrade the searchability of documents as part of the document production process.

7. Pursuant to Fed. R. Evid. 502(d), the production of a privileged or work-product-protected document, whether inadvertent or otherwise, is not a waiver of privilege or protection from discovery in this case or in any other federal or state proceeding. For example, the mere production of privileged or work-product-protected documents in this case as part of a mass production is not itself a waiver in this case or in any other federal or state proceeding.

8. No provision of this Order affects the inspection or production of source code which will be collected and made available consistent with the Stipulated Protective Order governing this case. To the extent source code files are contained within emails, as attachments to emails, or embedded within other ESI produced in accordance with this order, a slip sheet shall be provided to note where source code files have not been produced. Documents where source code has been redacted, however, need only include labels to note that source code has been redacted. Nothing in this Order prevents a party from requesting the particular version of a source code file as contained within or attached to an email or otherwise embedded within other ESI produced in accordance with this order.

9. General ESI production requests under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 34 and 45 shall not include email or other forms of electronic correspondence (collectively “email”). To obtain email parties must propound specific email production requests.

10. Email production requests shall only be propounded for specific issues, rather than general discovery of a product or business.

11. Email production requests shall be phased to occur after the parties have exchanged initial disclosures and initial discovery has occurred.

12. Email production requests shall identify the custodian, search terms, and time frame. The parties shall cooperate to identify the proper custodians, proper search terms and proper timeframe as set forth in the Guidelines.

13. Each requesting party shall limit its email production requests to a total of eight custodians per producing party for all such requests. The parties may jointly agree to modify this limit without the Court’s leave. The Court shall consider contested requests for additional custodians, upon showing a distinct need based on the size, complexity, and issues of this specific case. Cost-shifting may be considered as part of any such request.

14. Each requesting party shall limit its email production requests to a total of seven search terms per custodian per party. The parties may jointly agree to modify this limit without the Court’s leave. The Court shall consider contested requests for additional search terms per custodian, upon showing a distinct need based on the size, complexity, and issues of this specific case. The Court encourages the parties to confer on a process to test the efficacy of the search terms. The search terms shall be narrowly tailored to particular issues. Indiscriminate terms, such as the producing company’s name or its product name, are inappropriate unless combined with narrowing search criteria that sufficiently reduce the risk of overproduction. A conjunctive combination of multiple words or phrases (e.g., “computer” and “system”) narrows the search and shall count as a single search term. A disjunctive combination of multiple words or phrases (e.g., “computer” or “system”) broadens the search, and thus each word or phrase shall count as a separate search term unless they are variants of the same word. Use of narrowing search criteria (e.g., “and,” “but not,” “w/x”) is encouraged to limit the production and shall be considered when determining whether to shift costs for disproportionate discovery. Should a party serve email production requests with search terms beyond the limits agreed to by the parties or granted by the Court pursuant to this paragraph, this shall be considered in determining whether any party shall bear all reasonable costs caused by such additional discovery.

15. Nothing in this Order prevents the parties from agreeing to use technology assisted review and other techniques insofar as their use improves the efficacy of discovery. Such topics should be discussed pursuant to the District’s E-Discovery Guidelines.

APPENDIX A

DOCUMENT HANDLING, PRODUCTION FORMAT, AND METADATA

A. Production Components. To the extent reasonably possible, productions shall include single page TIFFs, Text Files, an ASCII delimited metadata file (.txt, .dat, or .csv) and an image load file that can be loaded into commercially acceptable production software (e.g., Relativity).

B. Metadata Fields and Metadata File. Each of the metadata and coding fields set forth below that are available and can be reasonably extracted shall be produced for each document.

C. TIFFs. Documents that exist only in hard copy format shall be scanned and produced as TIFFs. Unless excepted below, documents that exist as ESI shall be converted and produced as TIFFs. Unless excepted below, single page Group IV TIFFs should be provided, at least 300 dots per inch (dpi) for all documents. Each TIFF image shall be named according to a unique corresponding Bates number associated with the document. Each image shall be branded according to the Bates number and the agreed upon confidentiality designation. Original document orientation should be maintained (i.e., portrait to portrait and landscape to landscape). TIFFs shall show all text and images that would be visible to a user of the hard copy documents. A producing party that intends to rely upon a color version of a document in any filing, hearing, deposition, or at trial must produce the document in color as a single page TIFF image, JPEG, or native file (at the producing party’s discretion). In addition, the producing party shall produce color or native versions of other types of documents in response to reasonable, good faith, and proportional requests for color or native versions.

D. Text Files. A single multi-page text file shall be provided for each document, and the filename should match its respective TIFF filename. A commercially acceptable technology for optical character recognition “OCR” shall be used for all scanned, hard copy documents. When possible, the text of native files should be extracted directly from the native file. Text files will not contain the redacted portions of the documents and OCR text files will be substituted instead of extracted text files for redacted documents. All documents shall be produced with a link in the TextLink field.

E. Image Load Files / Data Load Files. Image load file shall contain the following comma-delimited fields: BEGBATES, VOLUME, IMAGE FILE PATH, DOCUMENT BREAK, PAGE COUNT. Each TIFF in a production must be referenced in the corresponding image load file. The total number of documents referenced in a production’s data load file should match the total number of designated document breaks in the Image Load file(s) in the production. The total number of pages referenced in a production’s image load file should match the total number of TIFF files in the production. The total number of documents in a production should match the total number of records in the data load file.

F. Bates Numbering. All images must be assigned a unique Bates number that is sequential within a given document and across the production sets.

G. Confidentiality Designation. Responsive documents in TIFF format will be stamped with the appropriate confidentiality designations in accordance with the Protective Order in this matter. Each responsive document produced in native format will have its confidentiality designation identified in the slipsheet placeholder provided in TIFF format.

H. Redaction of Information. If documents are produced containing redacted information, an electronic copy of the original, unredacted data shall be securely preserved in such a manner so as to preserve without modification, alteration or addition the content of such data including any metadata therein.

I. Native Files. Spreadsheets (e.g., MS Excel) and delimited text files (e.g., comma-separated value (.csv) files and tab-separated value (.tsv) files) shall be produced in either their native format or MS Excel. TIFF images need not be produced unless the files have been redacted, in which instance such files shall be produced in TIFF with OCR Text Files. If good cause exists to request production of files, other than those specifically set forth above, in native format, the party may request such production and provide an explanation of the need for native file review, which request shall not unreasonably be denied. Any native files that are produced shall be produced with a link in the NativeLink field, along with extracted text and applicable metadata fields as set forth in Appendix A. A TIFF placeholder indicating that the document was provided in native format and bearing the Bates production number should accompany the database record. If a file has been redacted, TIFF images and OCR text of the redacted document will suffice in lieu of a native file and extracted text.

J. Proprietary Files. To the extent a response to discovery requires production of ESI accessible only through proprietary software, the parties should continue to preserve each version of such information. The parties shall meet and confer to finalize the appropriate production format.

K. Production Media. Documents shall be encrypted and produced on external hard drives, readily accessible computer(s) or other electronic media, or via FTP or other equivalent (“Production Media”). Each piece of Production Media shall identify a production number corresponding to the production volume (e.g., “VOL001,” “VOL002”), as well as the volume of the material in that production (e.g., “-001,” “-002”). Each piece of Production Media shall be accompanied by an identification of: (1) the producing party’s name; (2) the production date; and (3) the Bates Number range of the materials contained on the Production Media.

PURSUANT TO STIPULATION, IT IS SO ORDERED.

DATED: May 17, 2024