Frei v Federal Insurance Company, No. 2:2020cv01113 - Document 19 (W.D. Wash. 2020)

Court Description: STIPULATION AND ORDER granting Parties' 17 Agreement Regarding Discovery of Electronically Stored Information. Signed by Judge Thomas S. Zilly.(MW)

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Absent a showing of good cause by the requesting party, the following categories of ESI need not be preserved: 5 a. Deleted, slack, fragmented, or other data only accessible by forensics. 6 b. Random access memory (RAM), temporary files, or other ephemeral data 7 that are difficult to preserve without disabling the operating system. 8 9 d. Data in metadata fields that are frequently updated automatically, such as last-opened dates (see also Section (E)(5)). e. 12 13 On-line access data such as temporary internet files, history, cache, cookies, and the like. 10 11 c. Back-up data that are substantially duplicative of data that are more accessible elsewhere. 14 f. Server, system or network logs. 15 g. Data remaining from systems no longer in use that is unintelligible on the 16 systems in use. h. 17 Electronic data (e.g., email, calendars, contact data, and notes) sent to or 18 from mobile devices (e.g., iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry devices), provided that a copy 19 of all such electronic data is routinely saved elsewhere (such as on a server, laptop, desktop 20 computer, or “cloud” storage). 21 D. 22 23 24 25 Privilege. 1. With respect to privileged or work-product information generated after the filing of the complaint, parties are not required to include any such information in privilege logs. 2. Activities undertaken in compliance with the duty to preserve information are protected from disclosure and discovery under Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(3)(A) and (B). 26 AGREEMENT REGARDING DISCOVERY OF ELECTRONICALLY STORED INFORMATION AND ORDER - 3 CASE NO. 2:20-cv-01113-TSZ SUMMIT LAW GROUP, PLLC 315 FIFTH AVENUE SOUTH, SUITE 1000 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98104-2682 Telephone: (206) 676-7000 Fax: (206) 676-7001 Case 2:20-cv-01113-TSZ Document 19 Filed 12/16/20 Page 4 of 6 3. 1 Information produced in discovery that is protected as privileged or work product 2 shall be immediately returned to the producing party, and its production shall not constitute a 3 waiver of such protection, if: (i) such information appears on its face to have been inadvertently 4 produced or (ii) the producing party provides notice within 15 days of discovery by the producing 5 party of the inadvertent production. 6 E. 7 ESI Discovery Procedures. 1. On-site inspection of electronic media. Such an inspection shall not be permitted 8 absent a demonstration by the requesting party of specific need and good cause or by agreement 9 of the parties. 10 2. Search methodology. To the extent needed, the parties shall timely attempt to 11 reach agreement on appropriate search terms, or an appropriate computer- or technology-aided 12 methodology, before any such effort is undertaken. The parties shall continue to cooperate in 13 revising the appropriateness of the search terms or computer- or technology-aided methodology. 14 In the absence of agreement on appropriate search terms, or an appropriate computer- or 15 technology-aided methodology, the following procedures shall apply: 16 a. A producing party shall disclose the search terms or queries, if any, and 17 methodology that it proposes to use to locate ESI likely to contain discoverable information. The 18 parties shall meet and confer to attempt to reach an agreement on the producing party’s search 19 terms and/or other methodology. 20 b. If search terms or queries are used to locate ESI likely to contain 21 discoverable information, a requesting party is entitled to no more than 5 additional terms or 22 queries to be used in connection with further electronic searches absent a showing of good cause 23 or agreement of the parties. The 5 additional terms or queries, if any, must be provided by the 24 requesting party within 14 days of receipt of the producing party’s production. 25 26 c. Focused terms and queries should be employed; broad terms or queries, such as product and company names, generally should be avoided. Absent a showing of good AGREEMENT REGARDING DISCOVERY OF ELECTRONICALLY STORED INFORMATION AND ORDER - 4 CASE NO. 2:20-cv-01113-TSZ SUMMIT LAW GROUP, PLLC 315 FIFTH AVENUE SOUTH, SUITE 1000 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98104-2682 Telephone: (206) 676-7000 Fax: (206) 676-7001 Case 2:20-cv-01113-TSZ Document 19 Filed 12/16/20 Page 5 of 6 1 cause, each search term or query returning more than 250 megabytes of data are presumed to be 2 overbroad, excluding Microsoft PowerPoint files, image and audio files, and similarly large file 3 types. d. 4 5 The producing party shall search both non-custodial data sources and ESI maintained by the custodians identified above. 3. 6 Format. All electronically-stored information (“ESI”) and scanned paper provided 7 in response to these requests should be produced in a structured format including industry standard 8 load files, Bates numbered image files, native files and searchable document-level text files. PDFs 9 are to be in produced as individual document PDFs in searchable, bates-numbered PDF format, as 10 TIFFs, with a Concordance compatible load file (with companion text-delimited files ending with 11 file extension DAT and OPT). ESI that does not readily convert to PDF, including Excel 12 spreadsheet and PowerPoint files, should be produced natively and assigned a single bates 13 number. Documents produced in searchable, bates-numbered PDF or TIFF format should be 14 named to match the beginning Bates number associated with the file. ESI produced in response to 15 these requests should include the following metadata fields: bates start, bates end, doc type, 16 custodian (and duplicate custodians), author, file name and size, original file path, date created, 17 date modified and hash value. In the case of email, in addition to the preceding metadata, please 18 include: date sent and/or received author/from, recipient/to, cc, bee, title/subject, att_family field 19 (or a field similar to this that links any attachments to the parent email). For each document 20 produced in response to these requests, please produce a corresponding load file containing docid 21 and path (i.e., ABCOOOOJ ,Prod OJ\Images\00\ABCOOOOJ.pdf). Please contact the 22 undersigned attorneys if you have any concerns about appropriate format for the production of 23 ESI. 24 25 4. De-duplication. The parties may de-duplicate their ESI production across custodial and non-custodial data sources after disclosure to the requesting party. 26 AGREEMENT REGARDING DISCOVERY OF ELECTRONICALLY STORED INFORMATION AND ORDER - 5 CASE NO. 2:20-cv-01113-TSZ SUMMIT LAW GROUP, PLLC 315 FIFTH AVENUE SOUTH, SUITE 1000 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98104-2682 Telephone: (206) 676-7000 Fax: (206) 676-7001 Case 2:20-cv-01113-TSZ Document 19 Filed 12/16/20 Page 6 of 6 1 IT IS SO STIPULATED, THROUGH COUNSEL OF RECORD. 2 DATED this 15th day of December, 2020. 3 SUMMIT LAW GROUP PLLC SOHA & LANG, P.S. 4 By s/ Geoffrey C. Bedell Geoffrey C. Bedell, WSBA #28837 1325 Fourth Avenue, Suite 2000 Seattle, WA 98101-2570 (206) 624-1800 bedell@sohalang.com 8 By s/ Lawrence C. Locker By s/ Philip S. McCune Phillip McCune, WSBA #21081 Lawrence C. Locker, WSBA #15819 315 Fifth Avenue S., Suite 1000 Seattle, WA 98104-2682 (206) 676-7000 philm@summitlaw.com larryl@summitlaw.com 9 Attorneys for Plaintiff Brent Frei 5 6 7 WILEY REIN, LLP By s/ Daniel J. Standish By s/ Matthew W. Beato Daniel J. Standish (pro hac vice) Matthew W. Beato (pro hac vice) 1776 K Street Washington, DC 20006 (202) 719-7130 (202) 719-7518 dstandish@wiley.law mbeato@wiley.law 10 11 12 13 14 Attorneys for Defendant Federal Insurance Company 15 16 ORDER 17 Pursuant to the stipulation, IT IS SO ORDERED. 18 DATED this 16th day of December, 2020. 19 A 20 21 Thomas S. Zilly United States District Judge 22 23 24 25 26 AGREEMENT REGARDING DISCOVERY OF ELECTRONICALLY STORED INFORMATION AND ORDER - 6 CASE NO. 2:20-cv-01113-TSZ SUMMIT LAW GROUP, PLLC 315 FIFTH AVENUE SOUTH, SUITE 1000 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98104-2682 Telephone: (206) 676-7000 Fax: (206) 676-7001

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