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Doug Austin

Transitional Times for Two Big Names in eDiscovery – eDiscovery Trends

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Even for popular entities such as EDRM and the eDJ Group.

As reported in Law Technology News (EDRM Transitions to Nonprofit Status) by none other than George Socha, co-founder (along with Tom Gelbmann) of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), by May 2014, EDRM will become a nonprofit organization.

As Socha notes in the article:

“When we launched EDRM, we figured it would have a one-year lifespan — focused on addressing two fundamental sets of questions:

1. What is electronic discovery?

2. What might we all do about it at a practical level?”

Now, they’re in their ninth year, growing from 35 participants at that first meeting in May 2005 to over 260 organizations that have participated in EDRM.  On a personal note, I’ve participated since the second year and eDiscovery Daily has published 159 blog posts to date about EDRM and its phases.

For EDRM to be an ongoing entity, it has to be about more than the founders.  As Socha stated in the article, “for EDRM to grow and remain relevant and viable over the long term it cannot continue to be viewed as ‘the George-and-Tom show.’ We heartily agree.”

Transition is also afoot for another organization that has been a terrific resource for eDiscovery information: The eDJ Group.  If you’re not familiar with the name, you probably recognize their web site – eDiscovery Journal.  Now, as Sean Doherty reports in Law Technology News (eDJ Group Puts a New Face on a New Website), eDiscoveryjournal.com is now retired and replaced by the new website (http://edjgroupinc.com).

As Doherty notes in his article, “The big news: The new eDJ website, unlike the eDiscovery Journal, is not supported by vendors. The eDJ Group now offers Platinum, Gold and free (with registration) subscriptions to content comprising research reports, surveys, analyst notes, blogs and the eDJ Matrix”, which is “a SQL database of e-discovery technology, applications and services”.

Doherty also reports that “Paid subscriptions to eDJ content start at $500 for Gold membership, which provides access to executive summaries, short reports, analysts’ notes and the eDJ Matrix. A platinum subscription provides full access to all content and a free subscription with registration includes access to blogs, free reports and the Matrix. Paid subscriptions are sans advertisement.”

It will be interesting to see how the changes impact both organizations.

So, what do you think?  Where do you get your information about eDiscovery?   Besides eDiscovery Daily, of course!  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

What is “Reduping?” – eDiscovery Explained

We’ve talked about “reduping” before, but since this question came up with a client recently, I thought it was worth revisiting.

As emails are sent out to multiple custodians, deduplication (or “deduping”) has become a common practice to eliminate multiple copies of the same email or file from the review collection, saving considerable review costs and ensuring consistency by not having different reviewers apply different responsiveness or privilege determinations to the same file (e.g., one copy of a file designated as privileged while the other is not may cause a privileged file to slip into the production set).  Deduping can be performed either across custodians in a case or within each custodian.

Everyone who works in electronic discovery knows what “deduping” is.  But how many of you know what “reduping” is?  Here’s the answer:

“Reduping” is the process of re-introducing duplicates back into the population for production after completing review.  There are a couple of reasons why a producing party may want to “redupe” the collection after review:

  • Deduping Not Requested by Receiving Party: As opposing parties in many cases still don’t conduct a meet and confer or discuss specifications for production, they may not have discussed whether or not to include duplicates in the production set.  In those cases, the producing party may choose to produce the duplicates, giving the receiving party more files to review and driving up their costs (yes, it still happens).  The attitude of the producing party can be “hey, they didn’t specify, so we’ll give them more than they asked for.”
  • Receiving Party May Want to See Who Has Copies of Specific Files: Sometimes, the receiving party does request that “dupes” are identified, but only within custodians, not across them.  In those cases, it’s because they want to see who had a copy of a specific email or file.  However, the producing party still doesn’t want to review the duplicates (because of increasing costs and the possibility of inconsistent designations), so they review a deduped collection and then redupe after review is complete.

As a receiving party, you’ll want to specifically address how dupes should be handled during production to ensure that you don’t receive duplicate files that provide no value.

Many review applications support the capability for reduping.  For example, CloudNine Discovery‘s review tool (shameless plug warning!) OnDemand®, enables duplicates to be suppressed from review, but then enables the same tags to be applied to the duplicates of any files tagged during review.  When it’s time to export documents for production, the user can decide at that time whether or not to export the dupes as part of that production.

So, what do you think?  Do any of your cases include “reduping” as part of production?   Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Court Denies Plaintiff’s Request for Native Production, Allows PDFs Instead – eDiscovery Case Law

In Westdale Recap Props. v. Np/I&G Wakefield Commons (E.D.N.C. Sept. 26, 2013), North Carolina Magistrate Judge James E. Gates upheld the plaintiff’s motion to compel the defendants to conduct supplemental searches and production, but denied the plaintiff’s motion with regard to requiring the defendant to produce ESI in native format, instead finding that “production in the form of searchable PDF’s is sufficient”.

In this real estate dispute, the plaintiffs asserted claims for fraud against the defendant.  While the two sides were able to agree on a discovery plan and a protective order, they were unable to agree on the form of production for electronically stored information (ESI), leading to the plaintiff’s motion.  The plaintiffs argued that “the metadata is critical where, as here, a fraud claim is at issue”.

The defendants produced 500 pages of documents after the parties agreed on the protective order, followed by a supplemental production of 120 pages and another 24,000 pages after the plaintiffs filed a motion to compel.

FRCP 34 states that the requesting party “may specify the form or forms in which electronically stored information is to be produced”, which the plaintiff did in 70 of 71 requests for production, requesting that “ESI production be in its native format, rather than searchable PDF’s, so that metadata will not be destroyed.”

However, Judge Gates was not convinced of the need for native production, stating “Plaintiffs’ contention that production of ESI in the form of searchable PDF files would destroy the associated metadata appears unfounded. While the PDF files would not necessarily contain the metadata, Centro represents that the metadata would remain intact and plaintiffs have not shown to the contrary.”

Continuing, Judge Gates stated “The court also finds that plaintiffs have not, at this point, demonstrated an adequate need to have all the ESI produced in native format…Instead, as Centro argues, production in the form of searchable PDF’s is sufficient. If after reviewing Centro’s production plaintiffs determine that they still seek production of particular ESI in native format, they may file an appropriate motion.”

Judge Gates did conclude, however, that the defendants were required to perform supplemental searches and production, ordering the defendants to produce all responsive documents based on additional search terms provided by the plaintiffs.

So, what do you think?  Should the plaintiffs have been able to receive the production in their requested native format?   Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Want to Know How Fast Data is Growing? Get Your Ticker Here – eDiscovery Trends

If you’ve ever been to Manhattan in New York City, you may have seen the National Debt Clock that provides a “ticker” which keeps track of how fast the national debt is growing and each American family’s share of the debt.  It’s a sobering number these days.  But, did you know there is also a ticker available to show how fast the Digital Universe (of data in the world) is growing?

EMC provides one on their Digital Universe page.  The second item on the page is the Worldwide Information Growth Ticker, which shows the bytes of information created since the beginning of the year.  The ticker is also downloadable as an Adobe Shockwave file, if you want to keep the ticker on your desktop (and have Shockwave Flash Player installed).

When I checked the ticker yesterday, the number was – wait for it – 3,405,902,249,917,050,364,392 bytes created since January 1.  For those that can’t count that high, that’s 3.4 sextillion bytes.  Of course, it’s more now.

If you type that number into Excel, it won’t even register correctly.  It shows as 3.40590224991705E+21 in the formula and displays the last six digits as all zeroes.  With that limitation noted, here is how that number (approximately) equates to different byte measurements:

  • 3,326,076,415,934,620,000 kilobytes (KB)
  • 3,248,121,499,936,150 megabytes (MB)
  • 3,171,993,652,281 gigabytes (GB)
  • 3,097,650,051 terabytes (TB)
  • 3,025,049 petabytes (PB)
  • 2,954 exabytes (EB)
  • 2.88 zettabytes (ZB)

Mamma Mia!  That’s a lotta bytes!  Of course, that’s the digital universe, not raw storage capacity, which is less.  However, according to new research from International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide installed raw storage capacity (byte density) will climb from 2,596 exabytes in 2012 to a staggering 7,235 exabytes in 2017, nearly three times as much in five years.  Wow.  IDC also provides an infographic analysis of data growth and distribution that is worth checking out.

Of course, just because data is growing at that rate doesn’t mean it’s all original data, so it becomes more important than ever to identify duplicative information via hash deduping, near dupe identification and message thread analysis, so you’re not reviewing the same files over and over again.  Nonetheless, the growth of data is noteworthy and I thought the ticker to reflect data growth was pretty cool.

So, what do you think?  What do you do to manage data growth within your electronically stored information (ESI)?   Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Someone Else’s Money – eDiscovery Best Practices

Leave it to Craig Ball to liken lawyers’ delegation of eDiscovery to Prince Akeem’s “royal backside wipers” in the Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America.

In Craig’s blog post E-Discovery and the Zamundan Royal Backside Wipers, he notes “everywhere I’m met with the attitude that electronic discovery isn’t a lawyer’s concern:  ‘It’s something you hire people to do,’ they say.”

“Certainly, we must hire people to do things we cannot possibly do.  But I contend that we hire people to do many things we could learn to do ourselves, and do economically.  Remember Eddie Murphy’s royal backside wipers in Coming to America? All it takes is money to burn; and if it’s someone else’s money, who really cares?”

The problem, as Craig notes, is that lawyers who refuse to educate themselves on eDiscovery and IT concepts run the risk that they may “go the way of the local bookseller and video rental shop”.  “Clients will not pay for Royal Wipers forever, and we should not ask them to do so.”

Craig then proceeds to provide five categories (with over 40 sub-categories) of “top-of-my-head list of lawyer duties” for eDiscovery.  It’s a great list and I won’t steal his thunder – you can click on the link above to view his post and the list.

Working for an eDiscovery provider, you might think that we prefer lawyers to remain ignorant regarding eDiscovery and turn everything over to us.  In fact, I find we get more work from attorneys that understand and appreciate the importance of managing eDiscovery effectively.  Those who understand the issues associated with electronic files, that processing files require a sound process, that you should test your search terms early and that cloud-based eDiscovery is secure are the attorneys who make the best clients as they understand the benefits of the services we provide.  Knowledge is power!

Craig finishes his post relaying the story of a recent speech, where afterward, he was approached by a woman who had expressed “frustration that IT folks use a lot of jargon and initialism when they discuss their work”, to which Craig noted that “perhaps lawyers should learn to speak a little geek”.  “[I]f you’re going to live in France, it makes sense to gain a little fluency in French.”

If not, you may find yourself a bit behind.  Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

So, what do you think?  What do you do to educate yourself on eDiscovery best practices?   Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

For more of Craig’s thoughts about lawyers and eDiscovery education, check out his three-part thought leader interview from earlier this year.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Use of Model Order Doesn’t Avoid Discovery Disputes – eDiscovery Trends

In MediaTek, Inc. v. Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (N.D. Cal. Aug. 28, 2013), when the parties could not agree on search terms, California Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley ordered one party to run test searches before lodging objections and required both parties to meet and confer before approaching the court with further discovery disputes.

The parties in this patent infringement matter “took steps to rein in” the exorbitant expenses of e-discovery in patent litigation by adopting the Federal Circuit’s Model E-Discovery Order. The parties proposed, and the district court approved, limitations on discovery. In addition to other limitations on interrogatories and depositions, they also agreed to limits on e-mail production. Specifically, they agreed that “production would be phased to occur after basic document production, that such production would be limited to seven custodians per producing party, and that each requesting party would ‘limit its email production requests to include no more than fifteen (15) search terms per producing party for all such requests, with no more than seven (7) search terms used to search the email of any one custodian.’”

However, as the court noted, the “parties’ laudable efforts at controlling discovery costs . . . imploded.” As discovery closed, the plaintiff filed 10 joint discovery letters seeking additional discovery from the defendant; simultaneously, the defendant filed a non-joint letter to “‘preserve its right to discover [] withheld documents.’”

MediaTek asked the court to order Freescale to produce the e-mail of seven custodians based on 15 search terms and “further identified the 7 search terms to be applied to each custodian’s email as required by the stipulated ESI Discovery Order.” Freescale objected and refused to run any searches.

The court addressed certain search terms, ruling as follows:

“The search terms which are variants of the word “United States,” including “domestic,” are considered one search term. The terms”*mcf* OR *mx* OR *mpc* OR *ppc* OR *pcf* OR *sc*” are not variants of the same word; instead, each term applies to a different accused product. Accordingly, each is a separate search term. The same is true for *845* OR *331* etc.; each refers to a different patent, not a variant of the same word. Thus, for example, MediaTek’s first proposed search term (Dkt. No. 133-1 at 3) is actually six search terms.”

The judge ruled the remaining objections to search terms and date ranges premature. Although Freescale claimed the terms were overly broad, it had “not run a test search on a single identified custodian for any of the proposed searches.” If it were to do so, it might learn “that the searches will not return a disproportionately burdensome number of hits.” If, on the other hand, they returned too many irrelevant documents, then the parties needed to work together to narrow the requests.

Therefore, the court ordered MediaTek to provide amended search requests and for Freescale to run test searches before asserting that any request was too broad. If Freescale did find the requests objectionable, the parties had to “meet and confer in person.” As the court noted, the “[t]he process is designed to be collaborative, something that has not occurred up to this point.”

So, what do you think?  Should courts require producing parties to test searches before declaring them overly broad?   Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case Summary Source: Applied Discovery (free subscription required).  For eDiscovery news and best practices, check out the Applied Discovery Blog here.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

New Survey Sheds Light on How Corporate Legal Departments Handle Outsourcing – eDiscovery Trends

These days, it seems as though every company is outsourcing work overseas.  Are corporate legal departments following suit?

Only to a point, according to a new survey available from ALM Legal Intelligence and discussed on David Hechler’s article on Corporate Counsel (The 2013 Legal Process Outsourcing Survey).  According to the article, “The LPO industry is like sex: There’s plenty of talk about it, but no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. Vendors will tell you that it’s really taking off—or is about to. They cite numbers in the billions of dollars, but these always seem to be projections.”

So, as the author notes, “we decided to ask corporate law departments (but not their law firms) to tell us about their experiences. We created an online survey and sent it out to lots of departments. We also posted links on CorpCounsel.com and invited readers to click in. And we asked not only whether they’ve made the leap, but, for those who have, where they’re sending work, what kind of work they outsource, what motivated them, and how they feel about the results.”

Here are some of the published results:

  • 54 percent of the respondents have outsourced legal work at some point;
  • Of the respondents who have outsourced legal work, 26 percent were “very satisfied” with the results, 41 percent were “satisfied”, 29 percent were “somewhat satisfied” and only 3 percent were “not at all satisfied” – meaning that over 2/3 of the respondents were at least satisfied with the work performed;
  • 65 percent of the respondents who have outsourced legal work have only done so within the US, while 35 percent have outsourced abroad (64 percent of those have sent work to India);
  • Document review and electronic discovery were the most frequently cited types of work being outsourced;
  • Asked why they outsourced legal work, fully 35 percent said “to test the idea.” This was the third most common reason, behind “lowering costs” and “reducing the time required to complete the work.”

Based on the survey, it appears that, while more organizations outsource legal work than don’t, most still haven’t dipped their toe in overseas waters (at least yet).

The full survey is available from ALM Legal Intelligence here for $599.

So, what do you think?  Did you expect overseas outsourcing to be more prevalent?   Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Need to Better Understand Litigation? This White Paper is for You – eDiscovery Best Practices

If you enjoyed Jane Gennarelli’s Litigation 101 for eDiscovery Tech Professionals series that was published recently on this blog, now you can get that same information (and more) in a consolidated, easy-to-reference white paper!

The white paper, entitled An Introduction to Litigation for eDiscovery Professionals, covers many of the things that litigation support professionals need to know to provide greater value to the attorneys that they support, including:

  • Bare-Boned Basics of different types of litigation;
  • Types of Legal Documents;
  • Types of Parties involved in a case;
  • Determining Jurisdiction for the case;
  • Initiating the Case and Defendant’s Response, which could include their own claims filed;
  • Establishing Guidelines via Meet and Confer and Case Management Conference;
  • Vehicles for Gathering Information during discovery;
  • What gets Turned Over and What is Withheld;
  • A review of the EDRM steps for Handling Discovery Documents;
  • Information about Settlements, Pre-Trial Motions and Pre-Trial Conference;
  • A comprehensive look at the components and phases of a Trial;
  • Circumstances for Appeal and process for proceeding with an appeal;
  • Appendices for mechanisms for Alternative Dispute Resolution and also Types of Litigation.

The white paper presents many of the topics covered in Jane’s ‘Litigation 101’ series, as well as some additional material not previously presented.  In addition to being a terrific resource for eDiscovery professionals, the white paper also covers the eDiscovery life cycle, making it a useful resource for all legal professionals.  Enjoy!

To download a copy of the white paper, click here.

So, what do you think?  Do you understand the “ins and outs” of litigation?   Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Great Resource for Status of State eDiscovery Rules – eDiscovery Trends

Ever wonder about your state and what eDiscovery rules it has?  Or if it has any at all?  The graphic of the US map you see here provides the key.

Winston & Strawn has a handy interactive map of the US (which looks just like this graphic) that enables you to click on any state (assuming that it has any information about rules) and get a page with links to the actual rules for that state (or documents related to rules being considered).  Wonder what the colors mean?  Here’s a key:

  • Green: This state essentially follows the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) eDiscovery model.
  • Blue: This state follows its own independent eDiscovery model.
  • Yellow: This state is in the process of undertaking and/or considering eDiscovery rules.
  • Orange: This state has not undertaken eDiscovery rulemaking activity to date.

Simply click on a state and you’ll be taken to a page with a listing of rules, orders, sample orders, etc., which, in turn, are also interactive and clickable.  For example, here is the list for Texas, my home state:

State Rules

  • TX_R. CP 196.4 Electronic or Magnetic Data

Federal Rules

  • TX_ S D LR Patent Cases Rules of Prac
  • TX_ S. D. Ct Procedures of Lee Rosenthal
  • TX_ S.D. Ct Procedures of J. Atlas
  • TX_E.D. Notice of Scheduling Conf
  • TX_N. D. District Misc Order No. 62

There are a few states that don’t seem to be clickable, but they are “orange states”, so it’s my guess that they simply have no documents available for that state.  This is a very useful and handy guide to eDiscovery rules in each of the states – well done, Winston & Strawn!

So, what do you think?  Can you believe that there are still apparently ten states with no eDiscovery rules?   Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Apple Wins Case, But Loses its Bid to Have Most of its Costs Covered – eDiscovery Case Law

In Ancora Technologies, Inc. v. Apple, Inc., (N.D. Cal. Aug. 26, 2013), California District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted in part and denied in part Ancora’s Motion for Review of Clerks’ Order on the Bill of Costs of prevailing party Apple, reducing the awarded amount from $111,158.23 down to $20,875.48, including disallowing over $71,000 in storage and hosting costs.

On May 13 of this year, after the court granted Apple summary judgment in the case, Apple filed with the Clerk of the Court a Bill of Costs seeking $116,366.87 in costs, including $94,400.71 for “fees exemplification and the costs of making copies.”  On May 28, Ancora filed objections to that Bill of Costs.  Ancora specifically objected to recovery of many of Apple’s fees based on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd, 132 S. Ct. 1997, 182 L. Ed. 2d 903 (2012), which had reversed the Ninth’s Circuit’s decisions reading the items of recoverable costs under Rule 54(d)(1) and Section 1920 broadly.  On June 24, the Clerk of the Court issued an order awarding Apple $111,158.23, leading to the motion by Ancora discussed in this ruling.

In its motion, Ancora sought review of the Clerk’s Order on Apple’s Bill of Costs as to six categories of costs.  Here are the categories and the judge’s ruling regarding each:

  1. Conversion of documents produced by Ancora in eDiscovery: As Judge Gonzalez noted, “Ancora produced many documents in a format that was not ‘text searchable’ and did not provide the associated load files or OCR data in a .TXT file format”, which was contrary to their own production format agreement.  So, the judge denied the motion and upheld Apple’s request for $3,471.61 for conversion costs.
  2. Storage and hosting of electronic documents: Apple sought “online hosting costs for several hundred gigabytes (GB) of electronic document storage, though it only produced documents amounting to around 3.5 GB of data”. Finding that “Taniguchi did not directly address the issue of taxing e-discovery costs, it did establish the principle that section 1920 does not cover all costs that are necessarily incurred in litigation, but only a narrow subset”, Judge Gonzalez upheld Ancora’s motion and reduced Apple’s award by $71,611.52.
  3. “Custom work” and “replacement” costs for electronic documents: Apple claimed costs incurred for “replacing corrupted electronic documents and resolving technical issues during the processing of documents for production”, but Judge Gonzalez found no support or justification for the costs and reduced Apple’s award by $5,375.46.
  4. Printing of documents in connection with deposition preparation and Markman hearing: Finding that “Local Rule 54-3(d)(3) allows the ‘cost of reproducing disclosure of formal discovery documents when used for any purpose in the case’”, Judge Gonzalez upheld Apple’s request for $3,998.05 for those costs.
  5. Costs related to visual aids, including equipment rental and graphics services: Again, adopting the narrow interpretation of Taniguchi, Judge Gonzalez denied $13,097.75 of the $13,227.95 requested.
  6. Costs associated with deposition transcripts: With regard to deposition transcripts, because “Local Rule 54-3(c)(1) allows costs for an original and a copy”, Judge Gonzalez upheld Apple’s request for $4,891.95, which included a second copy.

So, what do you think?  Were the correct decisions made regarding cost reimbursement?   Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.