Extract from Craig Ball’s article “Mad About Metadata”
It’s the month for giving thanks, and I’m ever-grateful for the daily e-discovery blog penned by my friend, Doug Austin, for CloudNine. It’s tough to get out a post every business day, and Doug’s done it splendidly for, what, nine years now? Kudos! Doug’s EDiscovery Daily blog is often my first heads-up for new e-discovery cases, true again for the decision he featured this morning, Metlife Inv’rs. USA Ins. Co. v. Lindsey, No. 2:16-CV-97 (N.D. Ind. Oct. 25, 2018)
It’s a familiar scenario. The requesting party expressly demands native file production. The responding party, a big insurance company, produces static image formats as non-searchable PDFs. When the requesting party objects, the carrier argues that the metadata it strips from the evidence isn’t relevant and that the request for native forms is disproportionate, again challenging relevance, and also claiming that producing in the native forms sought would be cumulative because (chutzpah!) they’d already produced in PDF over their opponent’s timely objection.
