Najarian Holdings LLC v. CoreVest American Finance Lender LLC
- Phyllis Hamilton
- 4:20-cv-00799
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Najarian Holdings v. CoreVest, Judge Hamilton ordered plaintiffs to reproduce emails, attachments, and electronic information in usable form.
The plaintiffs, who were ordered to reproduce their documents, emails, attachments, and electronically stored information for CoreVest; CoreVest was the defendant seeking the production.
What happened
In Najarian Holdings LLC v. CoreVest American Finance Lender LLC, the parties disputed whether plaintiffs had properly responded to CoreVest’s document requests. CoreVest said plaintiffs had not produced many email attachments and had provided documents in a format that made electronic searching difficult.
Plaintiffs argued that they had reasonably complied with their production obligations. The court concluded that the documents were not provided in a reasonably usable form and that emails and their attachments needed to be identified together.
The court ordered plaintiffs to reproduce all documents by 11:59 p.m. on August 13, 2021. The reproduction had to include emails with their attachments following them, digital files in a reasonably usable form, and available metadata. Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton issued the order.
The detailed version
- Najarian Holdings LLC v. CoreVest American Finance Lender LLC · No. 4:20-cv-00799
- Phyllis Hamilton
- Aug. 2, 2021
Background
CoreVest served plaintiffs with its first set of document requests on July 29, 2020. Plaintiffs produced documents, but CoreVest reported that at least 22 emails lacked their corresponding attachments. CoreVest also reported that plaintiffs had not produced the documents in a reasonably usable form, making accurate electronic searches difficult and unreliable. Although plaintiffs made additional productions twice in June 2021, CoreVest said the problems remained. The close of fact discovery was August 16, 2021.
Parties’ Positions
CoreVest asked the court to require plaintiffs to produce all responsive documents and to provide them in a reasonably usable form. Plaintiffs argued that they had reasonably complied with their production obligations. The opinion states that plaintiffs did not argue that producing searchable documents would be burdensome or expensive, and did not identify efforts to ensure that additional responsive email attachments were produced.
Legal Standard
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(b)(2)(E) requires documents to be produced as they are kept in the usual course of business or to be organized and labeled to match the categories in the document requests. The court also relied on the requirement that electronically stored information be produced in a reasonably usable form.
Ruling
The court determined that plaintiffs had not provided the electronically stored information in a reasonably usable form. It held that it was reasonable to require emails and attachments to be produced in a way that showed which attachments belonged to which email.
The court ordered plaintiffs to cure the problems with their prior productions by reproducing all documents by 11:59 p.m. on August 13, 2021. Plaintiffs had to reproduce all email communications and attachments as families, with attachments following the related emails. They also had to reproduce all electronically stored information as digital files in a reasonably usable manner while retaining any available metadata.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.