Massachusetts District Court Denies Plaintiffs' Discovery Request For Certain Electronically Stored Information

The district court's decision potentially limits the scope

of disputes over metadata.

On June 22, 2009, the U.S. District Court for the District of

Massachusetts denied the plaintiffs' "sweeping request for

metadata" in the case of Dahl, et al. v. Bain Capital

Partners, LLC, et al. In this complex antitrust litigation

involving many private equity firms, the plaintiffs requested that

the court enter an order, in part, compelling the defendants to

provide all metadata associated with e-mails and word documents

that the defendants produced. Metadata is persistent,

electronically stored information revealing the history of an

electronic document, e.g., who created or modified a

document, and when one created, sent, received or forwarded an

e-mail. Producing metadata increases parties' discovery costs

because it adds to the volume of information that must be processed

and produced and often requires the use of specialized vendors. The

plaintiffs also requested that the defendants bear the cost of

converting hard copy documents into an electronic form. The court

denied these requests, and only required the defendants to provide

certain limited fields of metadata and documents "as they are

kept in the usual course of business." Should other courts

adopt the approach taken here, defendants' electronic discovery

obligations may be significantly reduced.

Court's Analysis and Decision

At the outset of the court's decision, it noted that the

"Supreme Court has expressed frustration with trial

courts' supervision of discovery[.]" In the spirit of

supervising an organized and managed discovery process in this

case, the court ruled on several outstanding issues including:

Whether the defendants had to produce all metadata as the

plaintiffs requested, or only the 12 fields of metadata the

defendants offered to produce

Who bore the responsibility for paying costs associated with

discovery

The court framed its decision on both of these matters within

the context of the overall goal of discovery, which is to

"focus on matters reasonably calculated to produce evidence

admissible at trial."

In denying the plaintiffs' request for all metadata

associated with the defendants' e-mails and word documents, the

court relied on case law questioning the value of metadata in

litigation because "it does not lead to admissible evidence

and that it can waste parties' time and money." Although

the court did not analyze any evidence regarding excessive costs

associated with...