During the “Important eDiscovery Case Law Decisions for June 2023” webinar on Tuesday hosted by EDRM, panelists highlighted some of the key takeaways from recent e-discovery cases.
[Editor’s Note: EDRM is grateful for LegalTech News’ Cassandre Coyer‘s coverage of the “Important eDiscovery Case Law Decisions for June 2023.” We are also grateful for our partnership with eDiscovery Today and our moderator and curator, Doug Austin. We are grateful to our faculty DLA Piper’s Hon. Judge Andrew Peck (ret.) and the Gulf Coast Legal Technology Center’s Tom O’Connor who join Doug and Mary each month.]
While the e-discovery field is facing a wave of new challenges brought by the recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence, it seems the industry is still grappling with older, all-too-familiar issues, as well.
During the “Important eDiscovery Case Law Decisions for June 2023″ webinar on Tuesday hosted by EDRM, e-discovery experts unpacked some of the lingering trust issues surrounding Technology Assisted Review (TAR), the challenges with establishing appropriate electronically stored information (ESI) protocols and ongoing questions around proportionality that were at the center of recent e-discovery cases law.
Privilege Claims Still Require ‘Adequate Information’
In Tucci v. Gilead Sciences, which involved claims of wrongful termination, the e-discovery dispute centered around issues of relevance and categorical assertion of privilege, which refers to certain ESI that can be exempt from production during the e-discovery process.
In this case, Pennsylvania District Judge Jagan N. Ranjan granted the plaintiff’s motion to compel the defendant, Gilead Sciences, to provide materials from internal investigation files, finding its “categorical assertion of privilege over a relatively small universe of documents to be improper.”
What the court is saying there is that with the small number of documents apparently at issue, Gilead could have done a so-called traditional privilege log, listing things document by document which is ultimately what the judge ordered.
Former U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Peck of the Southern District of New York, now senior counsel at DLA Piper.
