Case Blurb: Perfect Barrier; “native” e-mail format production appropriate

[Producing Party] produced the emails in electronic form on an disc that is computer accessible. Such discovery is clearly considered electronic discovery. Under Fed.R.Civ.P. 34(b)(2)(E)(ii),
[i]f a request does not specify a form for producing electronically stored information, a party must produce it in a form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form or forms.
[Requesting Party] did not request that the emails be produced in a particular form, yet [Requesting Party] now asks this Court to force [Producing Party] to produce the electronic emails as Static Images with a bates-number identifier. [Producing Party] objects to this request because it would cost a substantial sum of money to convert the documents from the form in which the documents are normally kept, Native format, to Static Images.

[Producing Party] has already produced the emails on a disc in Native format. [Requesting Party] maintains the email documents in such a format. Fed.R.Civ.P. 34 only requires [them] to submit the emails in the format in which it keeps them, Native format, and nothing more. While it may be more convenient for [Requesting Party] to have the emails as Static Images, Fed.R.Civ.P. 34 does not provide that convenience is a basis for requiring electronic discovery to be produced in a different format than normally maintained. If [Requesting Party] wanted the emails as Static Images, it should have specified this request in its requests for production, which it did not do.

Furthermore, this Court finds that the emails produced on an electronic media such as disc is reasonably usable. [Requesting Party] can access, examine, and even print the communications. While [Requesting Party] may prefer to have them as Static Images, the burden to convert the emails to Static Images remains with [Requesting Party]. [Producing Party] complied with Fed.R.Civ.P. 34(b)(2)(E) and is required to do nothing more.

Perfect Barrier LLC v. Woodsmart Solutions Inc., 2008 WL 2230192 (N.D. Ind. May 27, 2008 )

Advertisements