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By Bill Altreuter

Electronic discovery shouldn't be a big deal, but somehow everyone seems to get it catastrophically wrong. D.C. Appeals Court Affirms Order Requiring a Non-Party to Spend $6 Million, 9% of its Total Annual Budget, to Comply with an e-Discovery Subpoena. "In the midst of a hearing, trial counsel agreed to restore backup tapes, search them using plaintiffs? terms, and then produce all email and attachments that were not privileged. Obviously the attorney did not intend by this agreement to assume a $6 Million Dollar burden, nor did the client authorize their attorney to do so. How can you have a six million dollar agreement without a ?meeting of the minds?? Yet, the district court keeps coming back to that agreement, made in the midst of a hearing, as the justification for requiring a non-party to spend 9% of their total annual budget to comply with a subpoena. The Circuit Court then upheld the decision as within the very broad discretion allowed to a district court to manage discovery. They did so without any comment or reaction as to the injustice of imposing this kind of e-discovery cost and burden." The take-away is that counsel needs to be careful about promises, which is always true, I suppose. (And thanks to A for pointing this out to me.)

Full post as published by Outside Counsel on March 25, 2009 (boomark / email).