Garrison et al v. Whole Foods Market, Inc.

Filing 69

Order by Hon. Vince Chhabria granting 68 Stipulation re Treatment of ESI.(knm, COURT STAFF) (Filed on 4/15/2015)

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 SEYFARTH SHAW LLP Jay W. Connolly (SBN 114725) jconnolly@seyfarth.com Giovanna A. Ferrari (SBN 229871) gferrari@seyfarth.com Joseph J. Orzano (SBN 262040) jorzano@seyfarth.com 560 Mission Street, 31st Floor San Francisco, California 94105 Telephone: (415) 397-2823 Facsimile: (415) 397-8549 Attorneys for Defendant WHOLE FOODS MARKET GROUP, INC. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Matthew R. Bainer, Esq. (S.B. #220972) Molly A. DeSario, Esq. (S.B. #230763) SCOTT COLE & ASSOCIATES, APC 1970 Broadway, Ninth Floor Oakland, California 94612 Telephone: (510) 891-9800 Facsimile: (510) 891-7030 Email: mbainer@scalaw.com Email: mdesario@scalaw.com Web: www.scalaw.com Attorneys for Representative Plaintiffs and the Plaintiff Classes 16 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 17 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 18 20 MARY GARRISON and GRACE GARRISON, individually, and on behalf of all others similarly situated, 21 Plaintiffs, 19 22 23 24 Case No. 3:13-CV-05222-VC STIPULATION AND [PROPOSED] ORDER RE: TREATMENT OF ESI v. WHOLE FOODS MARKET GROUP, INC., Defendant. 25 26 Plaintiffs MARY GARRISON and GRACE GARRISON, individually, and on behalf of 27 all others similarly situated (collectively “Plaintiffs”), on the one hand, and Defendant WHOLE 28 FOODS MARKET GROUP, INC. (“Defendant”), by and through their undersigned counsel, Stipulation Regarding Discovery of ESI and [Proposed] Order / Case No. 3:13-cv-05222-VC 1 hereby enter into the following stipulation regarding electronic discovery (“eDiscovery”) issues 2 in this case: 3 I. 4 PURPOSE Defendant represents that its preservation efforts for this action have resulted in the 5 retention and ongoing storage of substantial amounts of electronically stored information, as 6 defined in Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(a)(1), (the “ESI”). Defendant believes the vast majority of the ESI 7 is not relevant to any claim or defense in this action. Defendant therefore seeks to establish a 8 reasonable protocol for treatment this ESI so that it need not continue to preserve the substantial 9 amounts of data that have no relevance to this action. 10 II. 11 DESIGNATION OF E-DISCOVERY LIAISON To promote communication and cooperation between the Parties, each party shall 12 designate an eDiscovery Liaison. The eDiscovery Liaison will serve as a conduit of 13 communications regarding eDiscovery issues among the Parties including specific topics such 14 as: (1) the party’s electronic systems and capabilities in order to explain these systems and 15 answer relevant questions; (2) the technical aspects of eDiscovery, including ESI storage, 16 organization, and format issues;(3) eDiscovery dispute resolution; and (4) general facilitation of 17 the eDiscovery process. 18 III. PRESERVATION 19 The parties have discussed their preservation obligations and needs and agree that 20 preservation of potentially relevant ESI will be reasonable and proportionate. Plaintiffs represent 21 that they have retained relevant ESI in their possession, custody, or control. Defendant 22 represents that it has issued ESI retention notices to appropriate custodians and has undertaken 23 reasonable efforts to preserve relevant ESI in its possession, custody or control. 24 IV. 25 DEVELOPMENT OF SEARCH TERMS In an effort to cull the broadly preserved ESI down to a reasonable, manageable and cost- 26 effective review corpus, the Parties agree that certain filters should be applied to all preserved 27 data in order to identify the ESI most likely to contain highly relevant data. 28 2 Stipulation Regarding Treatment of ESI and [Proposed] Order / Case No. 3:13-cv-05222-VC 1 To this end, the Parties will attempt to develop a search methodology to locate potentially 2 relevant information from the preserved ESI. The Parties shall reach agreement as to the words, 3 terms, phrases and syntax to be searched. 4 The Parties agree to the following process for the development of search terms: • 5 6 On or before 30 days after entry of this Order, Defendant shall provide to Plaintiffs a proposed list of search terms and any related parameters. • 7 8 On or before 15 days after receipt of Defendant’s proposed list of search terms and related parameters, Plaintiffs shall provide any proposed changes. • 9 On or before 15 days after receipt of Plaintiffs’ proposed changes, the Defendant 10 shall respond to Plaintiffs indicating agreement or disagreement as to any changes 11 proposed by Plaintiffs. • 12 13 14 On or before 10 days after Defendant’s response, the Parties shall submit a joint letter brief to the Court outlining any disagreements, should any remain. V. SEARCH TERM METHODOLOGY 15 A. 16 In general, the process of review and production will consist of (1) loading of ESI within General Approach 17 the scope of relevant materials by agreement of the Parties; (2) further refinement through key 18 word searching and culling; (3) review by the producing party; and (4) identification by the 19 producing party of responsive, non-privileged ESI; and (5) production of responsive non- 20 privileged ESI to the other Parties. 21 The Parties acknowledge and agree that any information identified as a “hit” based upon 22 the search will be considered only potentially responsive. The Parties at their option may 23 produce any “hits” with or without attorney review to determine actual responsiveness and 24 whether any basis exists for withholding the document such as attorney-client privilege or 25 attorney work product. 26 B. 27 To reduce the likelihood of false search hits that may skew keyword search hit counts, 28 File Type/Extension Filters cause the review of non-reviewable documents, and increase costs of review and production, the 3 Stipulation Regarding Treatment of ESI and [Proposed] Order / Case No. 3:13-cv-05222-VC 1 Parties agree to limit the processing, review, and production of loose file and email attachment 2 data to commonly known user-created ESI file types/extensions, to wit: 3 pdf dotm xlam csv rtf dotx xls pages txt pot xlsm keynote msg potm xlsx numbers eml potx xlt jpeg emlx ppa xltm jpg wpd ppam xltx png mpp pps mpp gif zip ppsm wk3 bmp rar ppsx wk4 ai 7z ppt pub psd doc pptm pubx eps docm pptx pubm docx rtf tif dot vsd tiff 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 C. 27 Absent a showing of special need and lack of undue burden or cost, the Parties shall have 28 Cached Data, Residual Data, RAM and Fragmented Data no obligation to review or produce deleted, shadowed, fragmented, residual data, or documents, 4 Stipulation Regarding Treatment of ESI and [Proposed] Order / Case No. 3:13-cv-05222-VC 1 cached, temporary files, random access memory (“RAM”) or ESI that would only be preserved 2 by taking constant and repeated forensic (bit stream) image of hard drives and computer memory 3 sticks, neither of which is practical technically or economically. 4 D. 5 The scope of Defendant’s identification and preservation efforts included custodians’ Other Forms of Electronically Stored Information 6 voice mail as well as cell phone voicemail, cell phone text/instant messages. Absent further 7 agreement of the Parties or a showing of good cause and a lack of undue burden or cost, the 8 Parties shall have no further obligation to review or produce ESI regarding or relating to (1) 9 text/instant messaging communications; (2) voicemail messages and system information 10 including VOIP data; (3) web browser files; (4) personal digital assistants (“PDAs”); and (5) 11 mobile devices including, but not limited to, smartphone devices. 12 E. 13 On-site inspections of electronic media under Fed.R.Civ.P. 34(b) shall not be permitted, On-Site Inspections 14 except on mutual agreement of the Parties or upon ruling of the Court following a showing of 15 exceptional circumstances including good cause and specific need. Inspection or testing of 16 certain types of ESI may raise issues of confidentiality or privacy and such undue intrusiveness 17 resulting from such inspections shall be guarded against. 18 F. 19 Absent compelling circumstances and upon notice, any message, attachment or other Spam and/or Virus Filtering 20 electronically stored information that has been identified by a spam or virus filter shall be treated 21 by the Parties as per se non-responsive and the Parties shall not be required to produce such ESI. 22 VI. PRODUCTION METHODOLOGY 23 A. 24 The Stipulated Protective Order entered in this case, (Dkt. 52), provided that, with the Form of Production 25 exception of documents to be produced in native format, documents shall be produced in single- 26 page Tagged Image Format image files (“TIFF”) named with sequential Bates numbering with 27 each page branded in the lower right-hand corner with sequential bates numbering. At Plaintiffs’ 28 subsequent request, Defendant will endeavor to provide said documents in Portable Document 5 Stipulation Regarding Treatment of ESI and [Proposed] Order / Case No. 3:13-cv-05222-VC 1 Format (“PDF”) instead and will meet and confer with Plaintiffs if it deems that not feasible for 2 any particular production. Spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, multimedia (i.e., audio and 3 video), and similar files shall be produced in native file format named with sequential Bates 4 numbering, except where image/PDF format is required for purposes of redaction. For all 5 documents produced in native format, a single-paged placeholder with Bates numbers shall be 6 provided. Each production shall be accompanied by a corresponding electronic delimited text 7 file using Concordance standard delimiters (“Concordance DAT files”), OPT and/or LFP image 8 load files, and separate text files containing each document’s extracted text or text generated 9 through Optical Character Recognition (“OCR”). OCR text will only be provided for documents 10 with redactions or documents that are hard copy in origin, but all other text will be extracted text. 11 When available as part of normal processing, ESI productions shall also include available 12 metadata as listed in Exhibit B to the Stipulated Protective Order. 13 B. 14 During the processing of documents or ESI for production it may become apparent that Non-Standard File Handling in Production 15 some file types are not easily converted from native format into image/PDF files. In such 16 circumstances, the Parties agree to confer on an appropriate native file protocol. After initial 17 production in image/PDF file format is complete, the requesting Party must demonstrate 18 particularized need for production of electronic documents in their native format. If the Parties 19 are unable to come to an agreement, the Parties agree to seek appropriate relief form the Court 20 through further stipulation or otherwise. 21 C. 22 Nothing herein alters the provisions governing the production of metadata as set forth in 23 Metadata Production Exhibit B of the Stipulated Protective Order. 24 D. 25 Provisions regarding “claw back” and “non-waiver” shall be in accordance with Fed. R. Claw-back Provision and Non-Waiver Agreement 26 Civ. P. 26 (b)(5), Fed. R. Evid. 502, and paragraph 11 of the Parties’ Stipulated Protective Order 27 entered in this case. The Parties and the Court recognize that the significant amount of ESI 28 involved increases the possibility of inadvertent production of materials to which the producing 6 Stipulation Regarding Treatment of ESI and [Proposed] Order / Case No. 3:13-cv-05222-VC 1 Party may make a claim of privilege or of protection from discovery as trial preparation material 2 or some other asserted right. The inadvertent production of such documents or ESI shall not 3 operate as a waiver of that privilege, protection or right and shall not operate as any subject 4 matter waiver of that privilege, protection or right. 5 6 VII. RELIEF FROM COURT If the Parties are unable to agree, or need further clarification on any issue relating to the 7 preservation, collection, or production of electronically stored information, any Party may seek 8 appropriate relief from the Court through further stipulation or otherwise. 9 IT IS SO STIPULATED BY COUNSEL OF RECORD. 10 11 DATED: April 10, 2015 SEYFARTH SHAW LLP 12 By: /s/ Jay W. Connolly Jay W. Connolly Giovanna A. Ferrari Joseph J. Orzano 13 14 15 Attorneys for Defendant WHOLE FOODS MARKET GROUP, INC. 16 17 DATED: April 10, 2015 SCOTT COLE & ASSOCIATES, APC 18 19 By: /s/ Molly A. Desario Matthew R. Bainer Molly a. DeSario 20 21 Attorneys for Plaintiffs MARY GARRISON and GRACE GARRISON, individually and on behalf of all other similarly situated 22 23 24 25 26 PURSUANT TO STIPULATION, IT IS SO ORDERED. April 14 DATED: _________________, 2015 27 ___________________________ HON. VINCE CHHABRIA United States District Court Judge 28 19171254v.1 7 Stipulation Regarding Treatment of ESI and [Proposed] Order / Case No. 3:13-cv-05222-VC

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