California law regarding redacted email trial#

There is no inherent reason that non-relevant matter should be discoverable under 26(b)(1) simply because of proximity to relevant matter, for instance because it appears in the same document. Remember that Rule 26(b)(1) and its various state analogs say that “Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense…” (Fed. Although it is common practice in e-discovery to discuss production in terms of documents, it is not clear that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1) contemplates or mandates production by (whole) document. 2003) (citations omitted).Ī key to the Court’s reasoning appears to be that the basic discoverable unit in the discovery process is a document: “ have blocked out large chunks of information on documents that, by virtue of producing them, they admit are discoverable.” IDC.

California law regarding redacted email trial#

And remember, trial courts have broad discretion over discovery matters. The particular reasoning of the Court may not seem particularly troubling to you, given its lack of precedential weight, but it does demonstrate how unpredictable the trial level outcome of a fight over redactions may be. The Court ordered the Defendants to produce unredacted versions of the challenged documents and held that the protective orders in place in the litigation were sufficient protection for the defendants with regard to any irrelevant information. 26, 2017), the Defendants produced approximately 6,000 documents and redacted approximately 600 of those documents on the basis that they contained non-relevant information on contractual and business relationships that were not at issue. No worries, right? Time to tee up the redactions team! (Isn’t it lucky we’re under budget and ahead of schedule?) But hold on a sec - before you start drawing black boxes all over your documents, did you know a trial court in Wisconsin recently said you can’t do that? What will your court say? Fortunately, the information is indisputably not relevant. Even worse, a search through the universe of documents identified as responsive reveals dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of documents with similar information. For our purposes it doesn’t really matter what the information is – trade secrets, strategy documents that could affect the client’s stock price, internal investigations that could open the client up to unrelated liability, information that could lead to public scorn and PR nightmares… the point is, even with a protective order in place, here is something you just don’t want to let out of the building.

You pull up the document and, “Yikes – that sure is sensitive!” Yes, the document has some marginal reference in a line or two that makes it responsive to the discovery requests, but it also has page after page of sensitive information on subjects completely unrelated to the litigation in question. You’re even under budget and ahead of schedule! (If all that seems farfetched, don’t worry, just accept it as a hypothetical.) An email now arrives from the review team flagged as urgent, and with the tag line, “Take a look at this document, it’s got some pretty sensitive info – that isn’t relevant – and I’m pretty sure the client won’t be happy sending this out.” Protective orders are in place, the scope of discovery requests agreed to, custodians properly identified, search terms satisfactorily negotiated, the review team exhaustively trained and plugging away, QC processes set up and running successfully and timely production of your documents seems viable. So, you’re deep in the weeds of your latest e-discovery project for an important client and things are going smoothly.