Rudham v. Global Custom Commerce, Inc., No. 3:2023cv00152 - Document 21 (S.D. Cal. 2023)
Court Description: ORDER Granting 20 Motion for Order Regarding Discovery of Electronically Stored Information. Signed by Magistrate Judge Barbara Lynn Major on 6/8/23. (dlg)
Download PDF
<![CDATA[
Rudham v. Global Custom Commerce, Inc. Doc. 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 9 SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 10 11 KRISTIE RUDHAM, Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) 12 Individually and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated, ORDER GRANTING MOTION FOR ORDER REGARDING DISCOVERY OF ELECTRONICALLY STORED INFORMATION 13 14 15 16 17 Plaintiff, vs. [ECF NO. 20] GLOBAL CUSTOM COMMERCE, INC. and HOME DEPOT U.S.A., INC. Defendant. 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) Dockets.Justia.com 1 I. PURPOSE 2 This Order will govern discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”) in 3 this case as a supplement to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and any other 4 applicable orders and rules. 5 II. COOPERATION 6 The parties are aware of the importance the Court places on cooperation and 7 commit to cooperate in good faith throughout the matter regarding the discovery of ESI. 8 III. 9 DEFINITIONS A. “Litigation” and “Lawsuit” mean the lawsuit filed by Plaintiff Kristie 10 Rudham against Global Custom Commerce, Inc. and Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. in the 11 United States District Court for the Southern District of California and assigned the Case 12 Number 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM). 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 B. “Custodian” means an individual or entity from whom or from which documents will be collected. C. “Document” carries the meaning consistent with Fed. Rules 26, 34(a), and Evidence Rule 1001. D. “Electronically Stored Information” or “ESI” carries the meaning consistent with Fed. Rules 26, 34(a), and Evidence Rule 1001. E. “Email” means an electronic means for communicating written information through non-telephone systems that will send, store, process, and receive information. F. “Format” means the internal structure of a file, which defines the way it is stored and its intended use. G. “Hard Copy” documents means any Document or thing discoverable under Rules 26(b)(l) and 34 that cannot be characterized as ESI. H. “Native Format” or “Native File” mean the underlying file(s) containing the ESI at issue in the file system in which such ESI was originally created. I. “Party” or “Parties” means the Plaintiffs and Defendant in this Litigation. 28 -2- Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) 1 J. “Producing Party” means a Party that produces Documents. 2 K. “Receiving Party” means a Party to whom Documents are produced. 3 L. “Responsive Document” means any Document, excluding source code, that 4 is responsive to any Document requests served on the Producing Party in the Litigation 5 that the Producing Party has agreed to produce or that the Producing Party has been 6 ordered to produce by the Court. M. 7 “Tagged Image File Format” or “TIFF” refers to the CCITT Group IV 8 graphic file format for storing bit-mapped images, with multiple compression formats 9 and resolutions. 10 IV. PRESERVATION 11 The parties have discussed their preservation obligations and needs and agree that 12 preservation of potentially relevant ESI will be reasonable and proportionate. To reduce 13 the costs and burdens of preservation and to ensure proper ESI is preserved, the parties 14 agree that: 15 (a) The parties have discussed, or will discuss, a list of the types of ESI they 16 believe should be preserved and the custodians, or general job titles or descriptions of 17 custodians, for whom they believe ESI should be preserved, e.g., “HR head,” “scientist,” 18 and “marketing manager.” The parties shall add or remove custodians as reasonably 19 necessary; 20 (b) The parties agree that the following data sources are not reasonably 21 accessible or proportional to the needs of discovery because of undue burden or cost 22 pursuant to 26(b)(2)(B), and therefore the parties agree not to preserve, collect, 23 process, review and/or produce: 24 1. Backup systems and/or tapes used for disaster recovery; 25 2. Systems no longer in use that cannot be accessed; 26 3. Deleted, slack, fragmented, or unallocated data only accessible 27 by forensics; 28 -3- Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) 1 4. Random access memory (RAM), temporary files, or other 2 ephemeral data that are difficult to preserve without disabling the 3 operating system; 4 5. Server, system and network logs; 5 6. Data 6 in metadata fields that are frequently updated automatically, such as last-opened dates; 7 7. Dynamic fields in databases or log files not stored or retained in the usual course of business; and 8 9 8. Information created or copied during the routine, good-faith 10 performance of processes for the deployment, maintenance, 11 retirement, and/or disposition of computer equipment that was 12 not used by identified custodians. 13 V. SEARCH 14 Prior to conducting searches for responsive ESI, the parties will meet and confer 15 about methods to search ESI in order to identify ESI that is subject to production in 16 discovery, methods to filter out ESI that is not subject to discovery, and proposed ESI 17 search terms. The parties will also meet and confer regarding the custodians for whom 18 ESI will be produced. 19 VI. 20 PRODUCTION FORMATS (a) The parties agree to produce documents in TIFF and/or native file formats 21 as set forth below. If particular documents reasonably warrant a different format, the 22 parties will cooperate to arrange for the mutually acceptable production of such 23 documents. The parties agree not to degrade the searchability of documents as part of 24 the document production process. 25 (b) Electronic Production of Paper Documents as Static Images: The parties 26 agree that to the extent that a Producing Party elects to produce hard copy documents in 27 electronic format, such documents will be produced in the following format: 28 -4- Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) • 1 Single page Group 4 Tagged Image File Format (.TIF or .TIFF) files 2 at 300 x 300 dpi resolution and 8.5 x 11 inch page size, unless a 3 document requires a higher resolution in order to be appropriately 4 viewed. • 5 A unique Bates number shall be assigned to each page, and branded 6 in the lower right-hand corner of the page, but shall not obscure any 7 part of the underlying image. Each image should have a unique file 8 name, which will be the Bates number of the individual page. • 9 Any confidentiality or other endorsements shall be branded on the 10 lower left-hand corner of the page or other practical area. The parties 11 shall use reasonable measures to ensure that any such branding does 12 not obscure any part of the underlying image. • 13 In scanning paper documents, distinct documents should not be 14 merged into a single record, and single documents should not be 15 merged into multiple records (i.e., paper documents should be 16 logically unitized). The parties will make their best efforts to have 17 their vendors unitize documents correctly and will commit to address 18 situations where there are improperly unitized documents. 19 • 20 The parties agree that any file folders and/or documents affixed to hard copy documents will be scanned as separate documents. 21 • The parties agree that the Producing Party shall also produce 22 searchable optical character recognition (“OCR”) text of scanned 23 paper documents consistent with the specifications for Searchable 24 Text set forth in Section 5(e), below. 25 26 27 (c) Production of ESI in Native File Format: The parties agree that certain documents will be produced in native format, including: • Spreadsheet formatted document (e.g., Microsoft Excel Files). 28 -5- Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) • 1 Presentation formatted documents (e.g., Microsoft PowerPoint 2 Files). PowerPoint Documents shall be processed with hidden slides 3 and all speaker notes unhidden and shall be processed to show both 4 the slide and the speaker’s notes on the TIFF image. PowerPoint 5 documents that contain redactions shall be produced as static images 6 per the specifications in Section 6(d). If the Receiving Party believes 7 a PowerPoint document needs to be produced with color images, the 8 parties will confer to determine the best method of production. • 9 10 11 Video files (e.g., MPEG, AVI) and audio files (e.g., MP3) Any documents produced in native format should be produced in accordance with the following specifications: • 12 A unique document number shall be used as the file name, and the 13 original file name and file extension shall be preserved in the 14 corresponding load file. An example of this convention would be 15 ABC-JD-00000001. • 16 For each produced native file, the Producing Party will provide a 17 static image slipsheet indicating that the document was produced in 18 native format and providing the unique Bates number for the 19 corresponding native file. 20 (d) Production of ESI as Static Images: Except for those documents produced 21 in native format pursuant to Section 6(c) above, the parties agree that ESI will be 22 produced in TIFF format according to the following specifications: 23 • The parties will produce document images as single-page, Group IV 24 TIFF image files with an image load file in Concordance/Opticon 25 file format. For those graphic file types that cannot reasonably be 26 viewed in TIFF format (e.g., .jpeg, .png, .gif, etc.), those file types 27 will be produced in color. 28 -6- Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) • 1 A unique Bates number shall be assigned to each page and branded 2 in the lower right-hand corner of the page, but shall not obscure any 3 part of the underlying image. Each image should have a unique file 4 name, which will be the Bates number of the individual page. • 5 Any confidentiality or other endorsements shall be branded on the 6 lower left-hand corner of the page. The parties shall use reasonable 7 measures to ensure that any such branding does not obscure any part 8 of the underlying image. • 9 The parties agree to meet and confer regarding file types that are not 10 amenable to conversion into TIFF images. If necessary, any such 11 relevant and responsive, but non-convertible files, may be 12 temporarily produced in the form of a placeholder TIFF image. 13 (e) Production of Searchable Text: Extracted text should be provided with all 14 records, except for documents that originated as hard copy or redacted documents. 15 Searchable/extracted text should be produced as a document-level multi-page text file 16 with the text file named the same as the BEGBATES field and placed in a separate 17 folder. The full path of the text file must be provided in the .DAT file in the TEXTLINK 18 field. For files produced natively, the full path of the native file (also named the same 19 as the BEGBATES field) must be provided in the .DAT file for the NATIVELINK field. 20 Searchable/extracted text for redacted documents will reflect only the non-redacted 21 portions. 22 (f) 23 Metadata: The parties will include metadata, if available in the original file, in a .DAT file with the following fields: 24 • BEGBATES 25 • ENDBATES 26 • BEGATTACH 27 • ENDATTACH 28 -7- Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) 1 • ALL CUSTODIANS 2 • TO 3 • FROM 4 • CC 5 • BCC 6 • EMAIL SUBJECT 7 • DATESENT (MM/DD/YYYY) 8 • TIMESENT 9 • DATERECEIVED (MM/DD/YYYY) 10 • TIMERECEIVED 11 • TIMEZONE (the time zone used for processing) • FILENAME • DATELASTMOD (File system date and time last modified) • FILE_EXT (file extension) • FILE TITLE • FILE AUTHOR 18 • FILE SUBJECT 19 • REDACTED 20 • CONFIDENTIAL 21 • MD5 HASH 22 • TEXTLINK 23 • NATIVELINK 24 • PRODVOL 25 • ALL PATHS 26 • DATE CREATED 27 • TIME CREATED 12 13 14 15 16 17 28 -8- Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) 1 • PAGE COUNT 2 • CONVERSATION INDEX 3 (g) A Producing Party shall not be required to search for or produce more than 4 one identical copy of responsive documents absent a showing of good cause that the 5 production of such additional identical copies is necessary, provided that other 6 custodians from whom an identical copy was collected are identified in the “ALL 7 CUSTODIANS” field. 8 VII. DEDUPLICATION 9 (a) Deduplication shall be performed globally (across the entire production). 10 If a duplicate document exists that is part of a document family, the duplicate will only 11 be removed if the entire family is removed as a duplicate. 12 deduplication is used, the parties expressly agree that a document produced from one 13 custodian’s file but not produced from another custodian’s file, as a result of 14 deduplication, will nonetheless be deemed as if produced from that other custodian’s 15 file for purposes of deposition, interrogatory, request to admit and/or trial. To the extent that 16 (b) Paper documents shall not be eliminated as duplicates or responsive ESI. 17 (c) In order to reduce the volume of entirely duplicative content within email 18 threads, the Parties may utilize “email thread suppression.” As used in this agreement, 19 email thread suppression means reducing duplicative production of email threads by 20 producing the most recent email containing the thread of emails, as well as all 21 attachments within the thread, and excluding emails constituting exact duplicates of 22 emails within the produced string. Upon a showing of good cause by the Receiving 23 Party, the Producing Party agrees to provide metadata for specific documents and emails 24 that are not produced, upon identification and request by the Receiving Party. 25 Duplicative emails suppressed under this paragraph need not be reflected on the Party’s 26 privilege log. 27 VIII. PASSWORD-PROTECTED FILES. 28 -9- Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) 1 To the extent any produced Documents are password-protected, the Producing 2 Party shall make reasonable efforts to unlock the Document prior to production or 3 provide passwords in order to allow access by the Receiving Party. If the Producing 4 Party is unable to process a Document because of unknown passwords or other 5 encryption, the Producing Party shall retain a listing of such Documents in an exception 6 report. 7 IX. TIMELY PRODUCTION 8 The Parties will endeavor to produce Documents in a rolling but reasonably timely 9 manner and in accordance with the timelines set forth in the Federal Rules of Civil 10 Procedure. If either party feels production has been unreasonably delayed, the parties 11 agree to confer via telephone or in person in order to attempt to reach a mutually 12 agreeable consensus prior to court involvement. 13 X. DOCUMENTS PROTECTED FROM DISCOVERY 14 Nothing contained herein is intended to or shall serve to limit a Party’s right to 15 conduct a review of documents, ESI or information (including metadata) for relevance, 16 responsiveness and/or segregation of privileged and/or protected information before 17 production. Further nothing contained herein is intended to reduce the time frame 18 provided to the Producing Party to complete their review should they choose to do so. 19 XI. 20 PRIVILEGE LOG AND TREATMENT OF PRIVILEGED MATERIALS (a) Consistent with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a Party withholding 21 or redacting any responsive Document on the grounds of privilege, immunity, or any 22 similar claim shall provide to the Receiving Party a privilege log within 60 days 23 following the production of documents from which the privileged documents are 24 withheld, except that the Parties shall have no obligation to log: (i) communications 25 between the parties and counsel (including internal communications within a law firm 26 or a legal department of a corporation) regarding the Litigation or Litigation strategy on 27 and after the filing of this lawsuit and before the lawsuit in anticipation of Litigation; 28 - 10 - Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) 1 (ii) work product material created after the start of the Litigation and before the lawsuit 2 in anticipation of Litigation; or (iii) redactions of produced documents, provided that the 3 reason for the redaction appears on the redaction label and the Producing Party logs 4 redactions of designated documents in which a log entry is necessary to enable a 5 Receiving Party to assess the claim that the information is privileged or subject to 6 protection. 7 (b) For each Document withheld, the privilege log shall contain the following 8 information: (i) a unique identifier, or Bates number for produced documents, (ii) the 9 date of the Document; (iii) identification of the person(s) who authored or sent the 10 Document (iv) identification of person(s) designated as addressees, copyees or blind 11 copyees; and (v) the type or nature of the privilege asserted (e.g., attorney-client 12 privilege, work-product doctrine, etc.). For all individuals listed on a log whose role as 13 an attorney, or legal personnel acting under the direction of an attorney, is the basis for 14 a claim of privilege, the privilege log shall identify them as such (for example, by placing 15 an asterisk next to the name). 16 (c) Any email thread that is withheld on the grounds of privilege, immunity, or 17 any similar claim shall be logged as one Document and shall be identified by the 18 top-most email in the chain, but expressly identified as an email thread. 19 XII. REDACTIONS 20 In addition to redactions for protecting attorney-client privilege and attorney work 21 product, the parties may use redactions to protect information prohibited from disclosure 22 by federal, state, or foreign statutes or regulations; medical information concerning any 23 individual person; and personally identifiable information or sensitive personal 24 information. Redacted documents will be produced in TIFF format with corresponding 25 searchable OCR text and the associated metadata for the document, ensuring the 26 redacted content is fully protected from disclosure. The Producing Party may use native 27 file redaction of spreadsheet formatted documents (i.e., Microsoft Excel) using industry 28 - 11 - Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM) 1 standard native redaction tools. Documents with native file redactions will also include 2 searchable text and associated metadata, with protected content removed to protect 3 disclosure. 4 XIII. MODIFICATION 5 This Order may be modified by an Order approved by the Court. 6 IT IS SO ORDERED. 7 Dated: 6/8/2023 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 - 12 - Case No. 3:23-cv-00152-DMS(BLM)
]]>
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You
should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google
Privacy Policy and
Terms of Service apply.
