Case Blurb: Pension Comm. of the Univ. of Montreal Pension Plan; Negligence Defined

It is useful to begin with standard definitions of each term and then to explore the conduct, in the discovery context, that causes certain conduct to fall in one category or another.

[Negligence] is conduct “which falls below the standard established by for the protection of others against unreasonable risk of harm.” [Negligence] is caused by heedlessness or inadvertence, by which the negligent party is unaware of the results which may follow from [its] act. But it may also arise where the negligent party has considered the possible consequences carefully, and has exercised [its] own best judgment.

Pension Comm. of the Univ. of Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of Am. Secs, LLC, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4546 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 15, 2010)

Case Summary is here.

Case Summary: Pension Comm. of the Univ. of Montreal; Importance of Litigation Hold Notices

Pension Comm. of the Univ. of Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of Am. Secs, LLC, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4546 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 15, 2010)

Background: Action brought by investors to recover funds lost upon the liquidation of two hedge funds based in the British Virgin Islands. The court examines the litigation holds practice of the plaintiffs.

Basic Points:

• Spoliation sanctions imposed despite no “egregious behavior.”
• Lit Hold for Plaintiffs often (usually?) occur earlier than or Defendants.
• New Balancing Test for Burden of Proof
• Inefficiencies greatly increased legal fees
• Defendant’s attack mode was effective
• Collection methods placing “total reliance” on the custodian criticized.
• Zubulake a watershed for this case’s participants.

The court begins by noting that we live in an era where there are vast amounts of ESI available for review, causing the discovery process to be complex and expensive. The opinion expresses the consoling thought that courts do not hold parties to a standard of perfection, but follows that with the warning that parties must preserve relevant records once litigation is reasonably anticipated, and must collect, review and produce those records to the other side. Failing to do so damages the integrity of the judicial system.

The Court continues by setting up the basic framework:

From the outset, it is important to recognize what this case involves and what it does not. This case does not present any egregious examples of litigants purposefully destroying evidence. This is a case where plaintiffs failed to timely institute written litigation holds and engaged in careless and indifferent collection efforts after the duty to preserve arose. As a result, there can be little doubt that some documents were lost or destroyed.

The question, then, is whether plaintiffs’ conduct requires this Court to impose a sanction for the spoliation of evidence. To answer this question, there are several concepts that must be carefully reviewed and analyzed. The first is plaintiffs’ level of culpability — that is, was their conduct of discovery acceptable or was it negligent, grossly negligent, or willful. The second is the interplay between the duty to preserve evidence and the spoliation of evidence. The third is which party should bear the burden of proving that evidence has been lost or destroyed and the consequences resulting from that loss. And the fourth is the appropriate remedy for the harm caused by the spoliation.

First, the court provided basic definitions for negligence and gross negligence. The court then discussed culpability (willfulness, gross negligence, and negligence) in the context of electronic discovery. The chart below summarizes the analysis.

Degree of Culpability for Specific Acts

The court qualified its judgments by stating that each case will turn on its own facts.

The court continued by noting that the common law duty to preserve evidence was well-recognized, that the breach of this duty invited sanctions from the court, and that the duty attached at the time a party reasonably anticipates litigation. Because Plaintiff’s control the timing of the litigation, their duty is often triggered before litigation commences. In this case, the court reasoned that by April of 2003, Lancer (one defendant hedge fund) had already filed for bankruptcy; Plaintiff UM had filed a complaint; at least two other plaintiffs (Hunicutt & Chagnon) had retained counsel, and plaintiff Chagnon had been in contact with other plaintiffs. With these facts listed, the court decided that by April 2003, therefore, plaintiffs, all sophisticated investors, should have been aware of pending collapse and litigation. Below, is a table that shows the steps plaintiffs took to preserve data, and the court’s analysis of those steps:

Court Analyzes Plaintiffs' Collections Methods

Interesting, the court describes two attacks on Plaintiffs’ process by Defendants that proved to be successful. By cross-referencing productions from other plaintiffs, former co-defendants, and the receiver in a related SEC action, Defendants identified 311 documents unaccountably absent from production. This, in turn, led to the discovery that almost all declarations were false and misleading or executed by declarants without personal knowledge of its contents.

Next, Defendants were able to convince the court that certain records had to missing, via logic, over plaintiffs’ objection. Defendants argued that:

• All plaintiffs had a fiduciary duty to conduct due diligence before making significant investments in the funds.
• Records must have existed documenting the due diligence, investments and subsequent monitoring of these investments.
• The paucity of records produced by some plaintiffs and the admitted failure to preserve some records or search at all for others by all plaintiffs leads inexorably to the conclusion that relevant records have been lost or destroyed.

Here, then, the attack for defendants worked on two fronts: the technical and the legal.

The court then analyzed sanctions and their relative magnitudes of The discussion of sanctions and severity is summarized below.

Sanctions in Order of Severity

For less severe sanctions, the inquiry focuses more on the conduct of the spoliating party than on whether documents were lost, and, if so, whether those documents were relevant and resulted in prejudice to the innocent party. For severe sanctions, the innocent party must prove the following three elements: that the spoliating party:
(1) had control over the evidence and an obligation to preserve it at the time of destruction or loss;
(2) acted with a culpable state of mind upon destroying or losing the evidence; and that
(3) the missing evidence is relevant to the innocent party’s claim or defense.

Relevance and prejudice may be presumed when the spoliating party acts in bad faith or in a grossly negligent manner. The application of this presumption is at the discretion of the court. Typically, the innocent party must present intrinsic evidence that tends to show that the destroyed evidence was favorable to its case. No matter what level of culpability is found, any presumption is rebuttable. In order to strike a balance, the court crafted a new test:

When the spoliating party’s conduct is sufficiently egregious to justify a court’s imposition of a presumption of relevance and prejudice, or when the spoliating party’s conduct warrants permitting the jury to make such a presumption, the burden then shifts to the spoliating party to rebut that presumption. The spoliating party can do so, for example, by demonstrating that the innocent party had access to the evidence alleged to have been destroyed or that the evidence would not support the innocent party’s claims or defenses. If the spoliating party demonstrates to a court’s satisfaction that there could not have been any prejudice to the innocent party, then no jury instruction will be warranted, although a lesser sanction might still be required.

The court next reviewed the calculus used for the imposition of sanctions. First, it noted that a court has broad discretion to determine the approprate sanction in the event of a breach of a discovery obligation. Sanctions should:

1. deter parties from engaging in spoliation
2. place the risk of an erroneous judgment on the arty who wrongfully created the risk; and
3. restore the prejudiced party to the same position in which it would have been absent the wrongful destruction of evidence

A court should always impose the least harsh sanction that can provide an adequate remedy. Therefore, terminating sanctions are justified only in the most egregious cases, such as:

1. Perjury;
2. Tampering with evidence;
3. Intentional destruction-burning, shredding or “wiping out” computer hard drives;

The court then articulated the standards for various jury instruction types, and this analysis is re-produced in the chart below:

Adverse Instruction Types

The court ultimately imposed monetary fines and the following instruction to the jury:

The Citco Defendants have argued that 2M, Hunnicutt, Coronation, the Chagnon Plaintiffs, Bombardier Trusts, and the Bombardier Foundation destroyed relevant evidence, or failed to prevent the destruction of relevant evidence. This is known as the “spoliation of evidence.”

Spoliation is the destruction of evidence or the failure to preserve property for another’s use as evidence in pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation. To demonstrate that spoliation occurred, the Citco Defendants bear the burden of proving the following two elements by a preponderance of the evidence:

First, that relevant evidence was destroyed after the duty to preserve arose. Evidence is relevant if it would have clarified a fact at issue in the trial and otherwise would naturally have been introduced into evidence; and

Second, that if relevant evidence was destroyed after the duty to preserve arose, the loss of such evidence would have been favorable to the Citco Defendants.

I instruct you, as a matter of law, that each of these plaintiffs failed to preserve evidence after its duty to preserve arose. This failure resulted from their gross negligence in performing their discovery obligations. As a result, you may presume, if you so choose, that such lost evidence was relevant, and that it would have been favorable to the Citco Defendants. In deciding whether to adopt this presumption, you may take into account the egregiousness of the plaintiffs’ conduct in failing to preserve the evidence.

However, each of these plaintiffs has offered evidence that (1) no evidence was lost; (2) if evidence was lost, it was not relevant; and (3) if evidence was lost and it was relevant, it would not have been favorable to the Citco Defendants.

If you decline to presume that the lost evidence was relevant or would have been favorable to the Citco Defendants, then your consideration of the lost evidence is at an end, and you will not draw any inference arising from the lost evidence.

However, if you decide to presume that the lost evidence was relevant and would have been unfavorable to the Citco Defendants, you must next decide whether any of the following plaintiffs have rebutted that presumption: 2M, Hunnicutt, Coronation, the Chagnon Plaintiffs, Bombardier Trusts, or the Bombardier Foundation. If you determine that a plaintiff has rebutted the presumption that the lost evidence was either relevant or favorable to the Citco Defendants, you will not draw any inference arising from the lost evidence against that plaintiff. If, on the other hand, you determine that a plaintiff has not rebutted the presumption that the lost evidence was both relevant and favorable to the Citco Defendants, you may draw an inference against that plaintiff and in favor of the Citco Defendants — namely that the lost evidence would have been favorable to the Citco Defendants.

Each plaintiff is entitled to your separate consideration. The question as to whether the Citco Defendants have proven spoliation is personal to each plaintiff and must be decided by you as to each plaintiff individually.

Case Summary: William A. Gross Constr. Assocs.; Court Issues ‘wake up’ call to counsel on keywords

William A. Gross Constr. Assocs. v. Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22903 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 19, 2009)

The opinion addressed the creation of a search protocol in this case over “alleged defects and delay in the construction ofthe Bronx County Hall of Justice.” The court began by lecturing counsel, and the district’s bar in general, over its (evidently perceived lax) attitude toward formulating search criteria:

This Opinion should serve as a wake-up call to the Bar in this District about the need for careful thought, quality control, testing, and cooperation with opposing counsel in designing search terms or “keywords” to be used to produce emails or other electronically stored information (“ESI”). While this message has appeared in several cases from outside this Circuit, it appears that the message has not reached many members of our Bar.

The lesson began, the court complained that counsel had not adequately communicated in order to arrive at a suitably agreed-upon search criterion, and the protocol that had been formulated was not the result of a sufficiently methodological process:

This case is just the latest example of lawyers designing keyword searches in the dark, by the seat of the pants, without adequate (indeed, here, apparently without any) discussion with those who wrote the emails.

The court then stated that it found itself in the “uncomfortable position of having to craft a keyword search methodology for the parties, without adequate information…”

After making certain additions to the keywords comprising the search criterion, the court then cited opinions from Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc., 250 F.R.D. 251, 260, 262 (D. Md. May 29, 2008) (Grimm, MJ.) and United States v. O’Keefe, 537 F. Supp. 2d 14, 24 (D.D.C. 2008) (Facciola, MJ.) for supporting the supposition that formulating keywords “requires careful advance planning by persons qualified to design effective search methodology” and designing search protocols “is a complicated question involving the interplay, at least, of the sciences of computer technology, statistics and linguistics.” The court continued by noting that the “best solution” was for opposing counsel to cooperate in formulating a search protocol, and strongly endorsing the Sedona Conference’s Cooperation proclamation.

Lessons learned:

1. The formulation of search protocols is to be taken seriously, and accomplished with careful thought, quality control, and testing.
2. Initial assumptions should not be generated blindly or in an arbitrary fashion, and should be tested and, if necessary, modified.
3. Counsel should be prepared for greater levels of communication, cooperation, and transparency than in the past.
4. Even an admittedly imperfect protocol, if the above elements are present, may suffice.

Case Blurb: William A. Gross. Constr. Assocs., Inc; Court helps to craft Search Protocol

This case involves a multi-million dollar dispute over alleged defects and delay in the construction ofthe Bronx County Hall of Justice, also known as the Bronx Criminal Court Complex. The Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (“DASNY”) was the “owner” of the project. Non-party Hill International is DASNY’s current construction manager, and DASNY has agreed to produce Hill’s project-related documents and ESI to the other parties to this suit. The issue before the Court is the production of Hill’s emails, stored on its server at its New Jersey office, and how to separate project-related emails from Hill’s unrelated emails.

DASNY’s proposed search terms included “DASNY,” “Dormitory Authority,” and “Authority,” FN1 and the names of the other parties to the action. DASNY also added “Court! in connection with Bronx,” “Hall of Justice,” and “Bronx but not Zoo” (since Hill worked on an unrelated project involving the Bronx Zoo). The other parties requested the use of thousands of additional search terms, emphasizing the construction issues they were involved in, such as “sidewalk,” “change order,” “driveway,” “access,” “alarm,” “budget,” “build,” “claim,” “delay,” “elevator,” “electrical” — you get the picture. DASNY correctly pointed out that use of such extensive keywords would require production of the entire Hill email database, since Hill’s business is construction management, and those terms would be used for any construction project.

FN1: The Court is no keyword expert, but if one is searching for “Authority,” to also search for “Dormitory Authority” is clearly redundant.

Hill’s only contribution to the discussion was to agree that DASNY’s search [*10] terms were probably too narrow but the other parties’ terms were overbroad, and that Hill did not want to produce emails that did not relate to the Bronx Courthouse project. This problem would have been avoided, of course, if Hill used a standard “Re” line in its Bronx Courthouse emails to distinguish that project from its other work. It did not do so, however. Moreover, while Hill was in the best position to explain to the parties and the Court what nomenclature its employees used in emails, Hill did not do so — perhaps because, as a non-party, it wanted to have as little involvement in the case as possible.

That left the Court in the uncomfortable position of having to craft a keyword search methodology for the parties, without adequate information from the parties (and Hill). The Court ruled at yesterday’s conference that in addition to DASNY’s proposed terms (including variations on and abbreviations of party names), the search should also include the names ofthe parties’ personnel involved in the Bronx Courthouse construction. FN2

FN2: The Court acknowledges that this result is less than perfect, and that there is a risk that as information later comes out at depositions of the Hill employees, another search may have to be done.

William A. Gross Constr. Assocs. v. Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22903 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 19, 2009)

Case Blurb: William A. Gross. Constr. Assocs., Inc; Need for cooperation and communication during E-Discovery

Electronic discovery requires cooperation between opposing counsel and transparency in all aspects of preservation and production of ESI. Moreover, where counsel are using keyword searches for retrieval of ESI, they at a minimum must carefully craft the appropriate keywords, with input from the ESI’s custodians as to the words and abbreviations they use, and the proposed methodology must be quality control tested to assure accuracy in retrieval and elimination of “false positives.” It is time that the Bar — even those lawyers who did not come of age in the computer era — understand this.

William A. Gross Constr. Assocs. v. Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22903 at *13-14 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 19, 2009)

Case Blurb: Collins & Aikman Corp.; Deliberative Process Privilege discussed

The deliberative process privilege protects from disclosure “‘documents reflecting advisory opinions, recommendations and deliberations comprising part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated.’” The privilege is intended “‘to enhance the quality of agency decisions, by protecting open and frank discussion among those who make them within the Government.’”

In order to qualify for the privilege, a document must be “predecisional” and “deliberative.” A document is predecisional if it was “‘prepared in order to assist an agency decisionmaker in arriving at his decision.’” The agency claiming privilege “must be able to demonstrate that . . . the document for which . . . privilege is claimed related to a specific decision, facing the agency.” Moreover, the privilege does not extend to “‘purely factual’ material” or subjective discussions insofar as they were later adopted or incorporated in a final agency opinion. A document is deliberative if it is “‘actually . . . related to the process by which policies are formulated.’” Factors used to determine whether a document is deliberative include “whether the document ‘(i) formed an essential link in a specified consultative process, (ii) reflects the personal opinions of the writer rather than the policy of the agency, and (iii) if released, would inaccurately reflect or prematurely disclose the views of the agency.”

SEC v. Collins & Aikman Corp., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3367 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 13, 2009)(internal citations removed).

Case Blurb: Collins & Aikman Corp.; Form of Document Production for Gov’t Entities Conducting Investigations

Under Rule 34 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a party has two options for the production of documents in response to a discovery request. The litigant may either produce documents “as they are kept in the usual course of business or must organize and label them to correspond to the categories in the request.” The Advisory Committee Note states that the purpose of this new rule language — added in 1980 — was to eliminate the practice of “‘deliberately [mixing] critical documents with others in the hope of obscuring significance.’” Allowing the production of documents as they “are actually kept in the usual course of business” was intended to minimize the burden of production while maintaining the “internal logic reflecting business use.”

Rule 34 does not elaborate on the term “usual course of business.” A party choosing to produce documents as maintained in the ordinary course of business “bears the burden of demonstrating that the documents made available were in fact produced consistent with that mandate.” In most cases, documents produced pursuant to Rule 34 will be organized by subject matter or category. The provision prohibits “simply dumping large quantities of unrequested materials onto the discovering party along with the items actually sought.”

The SEC [(producing party)] contends that even if the compilations are not protected as work product, it has the option of producing the complete, unfiltered, and unorganized investigatory file, as this is how the documents are maintained in the usual course of its business. As noted above, Rule 34 mandates that documents must be produced organized by the subjects of the request or organized as they are kept in the usual course of business by the producing party. The key to this dichotomy is the assumption that in either case the documents will be organized — that records kept in the usual course of business would not be maintained in a haphazard fashion. Thus regardless of the form chosen, the production will be useful to the requesting party, and neither choice will inject unnecessary time and cost into litigation.

In order to determine what constitutes an appropriate production of records as they are kept in the “usual course of business,” it is first necessary to define that term. To begin with, not every litigant is a business or functions in the manner of a business. Black’s Law Dictionary defines a business as “[a] commercial enterprise carried on for profit; a particular occupation or employment habitually engaged in for livelihood or gain.” Only as a secondary definition, business constitutes “[b]y extension, transactions or matters of a noncommercial nature.”
[...]
By rough analogy to Rule 803(6), the option of producing documents “as they are kept in the usual course of business” under Rule 34 requires the producing party to meet either of two tests. First, this option is available to commercial enterprises or entities that function in the manner of commercial enterprises. Second, this option may also apply to records resulting from “regularly conducted activity.” Where a producing party’s activities are not “routine and repetitive” such as to require a well-organized record-keeping system — in other words when the records do not result from an “ordinary course of business” — the party must produce documents according to the sole remaining option under Rule 34: “organize[d] and label[ed] . . . to correspond to the categories in the request.”

The logic of Rule 34 supports this limitation. When records do not result from “routine and repetitive” activity, there is no incentive to organize them in a predictable system. The purpose of the Rule is to facilitate production of records in a useful manner and to minimize discovery costs; thus it is reasonable to require litigants who do not create and/or maintain records in a “routine and repetitive” manner to organize the records in a usable 55 fashion prior to producing them.

However conducting an investigation — which is by its very nature not routine or repetitive — cannot fall within the scope of the “usual course of business.” While the SEC routinely collects and maintains regulatory submissions such 10-K reports, in its investigative capacity the agency conducts tailored probes of a company or an industry, requiring the gathering of records from diverse sources. Many if not most of the 1.7 million documents in the SEC production here were likely collected in the agency’s investigatory role. Thus it is no surprise that the complete collection is maintained as it was collected — in large disorderly databases. The documents can only be provided in a useful manner if the agency organizes or labels them to correspond to each demand. Based on the SEC’s submission, it appears that this has already been done through the lead litigation attorney’s creation of the 175-plus file folders at issue.

Therefore, the SEC must respond to [Requesting Party's] request for production by providing him with the documents that respond to those requests. [Requesting Party] has not requested the SEC file folders as such, but many of them correlate with the factual allegations in the Complaint, the subjects of the requests. Thus, to the extent that one or more of the 175 folders assembled by the SEC’s attorneys constitute the complete set of documents relevant to a particular request…

SEC v. Collins & Aikman Corp., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3367 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 13, 2009)(internal citations removed).

Case Blurb: Collins & Aikman Corp.; Attorney Work Product Protection Applied to Selection and Compilation-2d Circuit

The Second Circuit has recognized that the selection and compilation of documents may fall within the protection accorded to attorney work product, despite the general availability of documents from both parties and non-parties during discovery. 18 However, it has labeled this protection a “narrow exception” aimed at preventing requests with “the precise goal of learning what the opposing attorney’s thinking or strategy may be.” Moreover, equity favors rejection of work product protection to a compilation of documents that are otherwise unavailable or “beyond reasonable access.” The Circuit has suggested that a court may permit ex parte communication of the strategy the withholding party wishes to conceal and in camera review of documents, so that the court may make an educated assessment whether production of the compilation will reveal a party’s litigation strategy.

If a court does find that work product protection applies to a document compilation, the requesting party must show “substantial need” for the materials and inability to obtain the substantial equivalent by other means without “undue hardship.” The showing of need must be “‘highly persuasive’” when discovery of “core work product is sought.” “Core work product” is defined as an attorney’s “mental impressions, conclusions, opinions, or legal theories” and is contrasted with “ordinary fact work product.”
[...]

It is first necessary to determine the level of protection afforded to the selection of documents by an attorney to support factual allegations in a complaint. Such documents are not “core” work product. Core work product constitutes legal documents drafted by an attorney — her mental impressions, conclusions, opinions, and legal theories. This highest level of protection applies to a compilation only if it is organized by legal theory or strategy. The [Producing Party's] theory — that every document or word reviewed by an attorney is “core” attorney work product — leaves nothing to surround the core. The first step in responding to any document request is an attorney’s assessment of relevance with regard to potentially responsive documents. It would make no sense to then claim that an attorney’s determination of relevance shields the selection of omnibus production similar to the one in this case.

SEC v. Collins & Aikman Corp., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3367 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 13, 2009) (internal citations removed)(emphasis in original).

Case Blurb: Aguilar; Court defines term ‘embedded metadata’, calls it ‘generally discoverable’

Embedded metadata consists of “text, numbers, content, data, or other information that is directly or indirectly inputted into a [n]ative [f]ile by a user and which is not typically visible to the user viewing the output display” of the native file. Examples include spreadsheet formulas, hidden columns, externally or internally linked files (such as sound files), hyperlinks, references and fields, and database information. This type of metadata is often crucial to understanding an electronic document. For instance, a complicated spreadsheet may be difficult to comprehend without the ability to view the formulas underlying the output in each cell. For this reason, the District of Maryland working group concluded that embedded metadata is “generally discoverable” and “should be produced as a matter of course.”

Aguilar v. Immigration & Customs Enforcement Div., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97018 at *14-15 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 20, 2008) (internal citations removed).

Case Blurb: Aguilar; Metadata Production Requests Should be Made Early

There is a clear pattern in the case law concerning motions to compel the production of metadata. Courts generally have ordered the production of metadata when it is sought in the initial document request and the producing party has not yet produced the documents in any form. On the other hand, if metadata is not sought in the initial document request, and particularly if the producing party already has produced the documents in another form, courts tend to deny later requests, often concluding that the metadata is not relevant.

In sum, as a recent article has noted, if a party wants metadata, it should “Ask for it. Up front. Otherwise, if [the party] ask[s] too late or ha[s] already received the document in another form, [it] may be out of luck.” Hagenbuch [v. 3B6 Sistemi Elettronici Industriali S.R.L., 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10838 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 8, 2006)] illustrates the wisdom of this advice. In that patent infringement suit, the plaintiff demanded electronic document production in native form in his first document request. The defendants rejected this request and produced the documents in TIFF format without metadata. The court noted that the TIFF documents did not contain such relevant information as the creation and modification dates of documents, email attachments and recipients, and other metadata. The court also observed that the metadata was relevant to the plaintiff’s infringement claim because it “will allow him to piece together the chronology of events and figure out, among other things, who received what information and when.” The court therefore ordered production in native form despite the fact that the defendants could not Bates stamp the documents and had already made a production.

By comparison, in [Autotech Techs. Ltd. P'ship v. AutomationDirect.com, Inc., 248 F.R.D. 556 (N.D. Ill. 2008)], the court denied a motion to compel the production of metadata for Word documents after the plaintiff had already produced the documents in both PDF and paper format. In that case, the initial production request did not specify a form for production. As the court noted, the plaintiff therefore could have produced its documents in the form in which they were ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form. In concluding that production in PDF form constituted a reasonably usable form, the court relied heavily upon the defendant’s failure to ask for metadata at the outset. The court stated that it “seems a little late to ask for metadata after documents responsive to a request have been produced in both paper and electronic format.” . The court also noted that, “[o]rdinarily, courts will not compel the production of metadata when a party did not make that a part of its request.” It concluded that the defendant “was the master of its production requests; it must be satisfied with what it asked for.”
[...]
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, case law, and the Sedona Principles all further emphasize that electronic discovery should be a party-driven process. Indeed, Rule 26(f) requires that the parties meet and confer to develop a discovery plan. That discovery plan must discuss “any issues about disclosure or discovery of [EST], including the form or forms in which it should be produced.” In fact, the commentary to the rule specifically notes that whether metadata “should be produced may be among the topics discussed in the Rule 26(f) conference.” As the commentary further observes, early identification of disputes over the forms production may help avoid the expense and delay of searches or productions using inappropriate forms.” Thus, at the outset of any litigation, the parties should discuss whether the production of metadata is appropriate and attempt to resolve the issue without court intervention.

Likewise, courts have emphasized the need for the parties to confer and reach agreements regarding the form of electronic document production before seeking to involve the court.
[...]

Metadata has become “the new black,” with parties increasingly seeking its production in every case, regardless of size or complexity. In keeping with that trend, the Plaintiffs in this case argue that all metadata for all electronic documents should be produced, both because the metadata is relevant to their claims and because it will enable them to search and sort the documents more efficiently. In evaluating these assertions, the timing of the Plaintiffs’ request is important. The first Rule 26(f) conference was held on January 18, 2008. Thereafter, the first request for production of documents was made on February 15, 2008. Throughout this time period, the Plaintiffs made no mention of metadata even though the Defendants had started to harvest their documents. Indeed, by the time the Plaintiffs first informed the Defendants of their desire for metadata (in passing on March 18 and formally on May 22, 2008), the Defendants’ document collection efforts were largely complete and they had already produced many of their electronic documents in PDF format without accompanying metadata. In these circumstances, the Plaintiffs face an uphill battle in their efforts to compel the Defendants to make a second production of their ESI.

Aguilar v. Immigration & Customs Enforcement Div., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97018 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 20, 2008) (internal citations removed).