Access Business Group International, LLC et al v. Refresco Beverages US Inc.

Filing 38

STIPULATED PROTOCOL FOR THE PRODUCTION OF ELECTRONICALLY STORED INFORMATION...regarding procedures to be followed that shall govern the handling of confidential material... SO ORDERED. (Signed by Judge Lorna G. Schofield on 5/9/2022) (kv)

Case 1:21-cv-10779-LGS Document 38 Filed 05/09/22 Page 1 of 10
SO ORDERED.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
ACCESS BUSINESS GROUP
INTERNATIONAL, LLC and ACCESS
BUSINESS GROUP LLC,
Plaintiffs/CounterDefendants,
-againstREFRESCO BEVERAGES US INC.,
Defendant/Counter-

Dated: May 9, 2022
New York, New York

Civil Action No. 1:21-cv-10779-LGS
STIPULATED PROTOCOL FOR
THE PRODUCTION OF
ELECTRONICALLY STORED
INFORMATION

Plaintiff.

The parties agree to the following provisions regarding the discovery of electronically
stored information (“ESI”) in this matter.
A.

ESI DISCLOSURES
The parties have provided the following information in Appendix A:
1.

Custodians. The parties have identified custodians most likely to have discoverable

ESI in their possession, custody, or control. The custodians are identified by name.
B.

PRESERVATION OF ESI
The parties acknowledge that they must take reasonable and proportional steps to preserve

discoverable information in their possession, custody, or control. With respect to preservation of
ESI, the parties agree as follows:
1.

Absent a showing of good cause by the requesting party, the parties are not

required to modify the procedures used by them in the ordinary course of business to back-up and
archive data; provided, however, that the parties must preserve all discoverable ESI in their
possession, custody, or control.

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2.

The parties must supplement their production of ESI if they learn that in some

material respect their production is incomplete or incorrect and the additional or corrective
information has not been made known to the other parties.
3.

Absent a showing of good cause by the requesting party, the parties are not required

to preserve the following categories of ESI:
a.

Random access memory (RAM) or other ephemeral data that are difficult

to preserve without disabling the operating system.
b.

On-line access data (e.g., temporary internet files, history, cache, or

cookies).
c.

Data that remains from systems no longer in use and that is unintelligible

on the systems currently in use.
d.

Electronic data (e.g., email, calendars, contact data, and notes) sent to or

from mobile devices (e.g., iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry devices), provided that a copy
of all such electronic data is saved elsewhere (such as on a server, laptop, desktop computer, or
“cloud” storage).
4.

The parties agree that voicemails, instant messages or other non-email messaging

services, text messages, PDAs, and mobile devices are deemed not reasonably accessible and need
not be preserved and collected, unless otherwise ordered by the Court.
C.

PRIVILEGE
1.

The parties must immediately return information produced in discovery that is

protected as privileged or work product to the producing party, and the production of protected
information does not waive such protection if (i) the information appears on its face to have been

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inadvertently produced or (ii) the producing party notifies the receiving parties of the inadvertent
production.
2.

Privilege logs based on metadata.

Privilege logs must include a unique

identification number for each document and the basis for the claim of privilege or work-product
protection. For ESI, privilege logs may be generated using available metadata, including the
author/recipient or the to/from/cc/bcc names; the subject matter or title; and the date created.
Should the available metadata provide insufficient information to evaluate the producing party’s
claim of privilege or work-product product, the producing party must include any additional
information that is necessary to evaluate the claim.
D.

ESI DISCOVERY PROCEDURES
1.

On-site inspection of electronic media. The parties may not inspect electronic

media on-site unless the parties agree to on-site inspection or a party requesting on-site inspection
shows that there is specific need and good cause for such inspection.
2.

Search methodology.
a.

The parties each will initially search for ESI, in the files of the respective

custodians listed in Appendix A, using only the respective search terms set forth in Appendix B.
b.

After conducting said searches, and prior to conducting a review of the

documents identified in the search for responsiveness and privilege,
(i) if the total number of documents hit, in a parties’ search with the respective
search terms specified in Appendix B of the files of the custodians listed in
Appendix A, is less than 2,000 unique documents, the respective party will proceed
to review the documents identified for responsiveness and privilege, and then
produce all resulting producible documents; or

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(ii) if the total number of documents hit, in a parties’ search with the respective
search terms specified in Appendix B, is more than 2,000 unique documents, the
parties will meet and confer further and endeavor agree on additional search terms
to be employed with the objective of reducing the total number of documents hit,
in a parties’ search with the further specified search terms, to less than 2,000 unique
documents. If the parties are unable to reach agreement on such further search
terms, either party may file a letter motion with this Court, in the manner provided
in Judge Schofield’s Rule III.C.3, requesting the Court’s assistance in setting
additional search terms or other search and review parameters.
c.

The parties also will search for responsive, non-privileged documents

contained in any segregated or topic file, that any party may have maintained in the regular course
of business, that was designated for the Agreement as referenced in the Complaint and
Counterclaims in this action, or for the “Products” specified in that Agreement.
d.

If during the course of discovery any party determines that a new custodian,

data source, or search term is necessary to collect ESI that is relevant, non-duplicative, and not
privileged, the parties will work together in good faith to determine whether the search term should
be applied or the custodian or data source should be added. If the parties cannot agree whether to
add the custodian, data source, or search term, the requesting party may bring the dispute before
the Court in the manner provided in Judge Schofield’s Rule III.C.3.
3.

Format. The parties must produce ESI in either native files or image files that

accurately represent the contents of the original ESI. All productions must be accompanied with
related field-delimited load files (e.g., Concordance DAT, CSV, OPT, or LOG). All native, text,
image, and load files must be named or put in folders in such a manner that all records can be

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imported without modifying any path or file name information. Where native format is
unavailable, ESI must be produced in a machine-readable format and accompanied by a
description of the system from which the ESI was obtained.
4.

Metadata fields. Each document in a production must be identified by beginning

Bates number in a metadata load file (*.DAT) reflecting, at minimum, any parent/child relationship
and the following fields: beginning Bates number; ending Bates number; beginning attachment
Bates number (if applicable); ending attachment Bates number (if applicable); custodians; file
extension; original file path; date sent (for e-mail messages); date created (for non-email
messages); date modified (for non-email messages); sender (for e-mail messages); author (for nonemail documents); to recipient (for e-mail messages); CC recipient (for e-mail messages where
applicable); BCC recipient (for e-mail messages where applicable); subject (for e-mail messages);
and file name (for non-email messages).
5.

If the pages of documents produced can be accurately represented in black and

white, they must be produced in PDF or group IV, single-page TIFF format. Pages that require
color to be accurately interpreted must be produced in PDF or single-page JPEG format. Each page
image must bear the bates number associated with that page and be identified in an image load file
in standard Opticon (*.OPT) format showing what pages unitize to make a document. The images
must also be accompanied by extracted text or, for those files that do not have extracted text upon
being processed (such as hard copy documents), optical character recognition (“OCR”) text data;
such extracted text or OCR text data must be provided in document level form and named after
the image. Documents that contain redactions must be OCR’d after the redaction is applied to the
image, and the OCR will be produced in place of extracted text at the document level.

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6.

Bates numbering and file naming conventions. Images must be endorsed with

sequential Bates numbering in the lower right corner of each image. Image and Native file names
must be unique and use a file naming convention with the associated beginning Bates number.
There may not be special characters (including commas) in the file names.
Dated: New York, New York
May 6, 2022

WARNER NORCROSS + JUDD LLP
By: /s/ Edward J. Bardelli_______________
Edward J. Bardelli
Ashley Chrysler
150 Ottawa Avenue, N.W., Suite 1500
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
Tel: [phone]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
Attorneys for Plaintiffs/Counter-Defendants
Access Business Group International, LLC and
Access Business Group LLC
PERKINS COIE LLP
By: /s/ Edwin M. Baum
Edwin M. Baum
LaMarte Williams, Jr.
1155 Avenue of the Americas, 22nd Floor
New York, New York 10036-2711
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]
Attorneys for Defendant/Counter-Plaintiff
Refresco Beverages US Inc.

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APPENDIX A
Access Business Group International, LLC (“ABGIL”) and Access
Business Group LLC (“ABG”)
Custodians
Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Jillian Moir 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Jess Florek 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Sarah Waddell 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Emily Hagadorn 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Xun Yan 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Jake Koetsier 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Brian Turner 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

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Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Eric Schmidt 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Refresco Beverages US Inc. (“Refresco”)
Custodians
Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Dan Harty 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Doug Poulos 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Joel Kapp 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Omar Al‐Saigh 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Brooke Cline 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Jon Marshall 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 

Amy Merideth 

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Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Joe Mikula 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

Name: 
Email Accounts:  
Date Range:  

Ramon Ruesga 
[e-mail] 
7/1/2019 to 12/31/2021 

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APPENDIX B
Search Term to be used by ABGIL and ABG
Custodians
All

Term Syntax
“Refresco”

Search Term to be used by Refresco
Custodians
All

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Term Syntax
“ABG*” or “AMWAY”