Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_16-md-02691/USCOURTS-cand-3_16-md-02691-26/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 367
Nature of Suit: TORTS - Personal Injury - Health Care/Pharmaceutical Personal Injury/Product Liability
Cause of Action: 28:1332 Diversity-Personal Injury

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 

IN RE: VIAGRA (SILDENAFIL CITRATE) 

AND CIALIS (TADALAFIL) PRODUCTS 

LIABILITY LITIGATION 

This Document Relates to : ALL ACTIONS 

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Master File No.: 3:16-md-02691-RS

MDL No. 2691 

STIPULATED ORDER RE: 

DISCOVERY OF ELECTRONICALLY 

STORED INFORMATION BETWEEN 

PLAINTIFFS AND ELI LILLY AND 

COMPANY

1. PURPOSE 

This Order will govern discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”) in this case as 

a supplement to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, this Court’s Guidelines for the Discovery of 

Electronically Stored Information, and any other applicable orders and rules. This Order shall apply 

to the production of hard-copy and electronic documents by Eli Lilly and Company and its agents, 

employees (current and former), representatives, subsidiaries, and other affiliated entities 

(collectively, “Lilly”), as well as to the production of hard-copy and electronic documents by 

Plaintiffs. This Order also may apply to state court actions provided that the parties thereto so agree 

or the applicable court so orders. 

Nothing in this Order alters a Party’s rights, obligations, and responsibilities under the 

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and any other applicable orders and rules, nor does anything in this 

Order impose additional burdens beyond those imposed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or 

any other applicable orders or rules. The Parties reserve all objections under the Federal Rules of 

Civil Procedure and applicable decision authority for matters relating to the production of documents 

that are not specifically addressed in this Order. 

2. DEFINITIONS 

(a) “Confidentiality Designation” means the legend affixed to Documents for 

Confidential or Highly Confidential Information as defined by, and subject to, the terms of 

Stipulated Protective Order entered by the Court in this litigation. 

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(b) “Document” is defined to be synonymous in meaning and equal in scope to the 

usage of this term in Rules 26 and 34 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The term 

“document” shall include hard-copy documents, electronic documents, and ESI as defined herein.

(c) “Electronic Document or Data” means documents or data existing in electronic 

form at the time of collection, including but not limited to: e-mail or other means of electronic 

communications, word processing files (e.g., Microsoft Word), computer presentations (e.g., 

PowerPoint slides), spreadsheets (e.g., Excel), and image files (e.g., PDF).

(d) “Electronically stored information” or “ESI,” as used herein has the same 

meaning as in Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 26 and 34.

(e) “Hard-Copy Document” means documents existing in paper form at the time of 

collection.

(f) “Hash Value” is a unique numerical identifier that can be assigned to a file, a group 

of files, or a portion of a file, based on a standard mathematical algorithm applied to the 

characteristics of the data set. The most commonly used algorithms are known as MD5 and SHA.

(g) “Load files” means electronic files provided with a production set of documents 

and images used to load that production set into a receiving party’s document review platform, and 

correlate its data within that platform.

(h) “Media” means an object or device, real or virtual, including but not limited to a 

disc, tape, computer, or other device on which data is or was stored.

(i) “Metadata” means: (i) information embedded in or associated with a native file 

that is not ordinarily viewable or printable from the application that generated, edited, or modified 

such native file which describes the characteristics, origins, usage, and/or validity of the electronic 

file; (ii) information generated automatically by the operation of a computer or other information 

technology system when a native file is created, modified, transmitted, deleted, or otherwise 

manipulated by a user of such system, (iii) information, such as Bates numbers, created during the 

course of processing documents or ESI for production, and (iv) information collected during the 

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course of collecting documents or ESI, such as the name of the media device on which it was 

stored, or the custodian or non-custodial data source from which it was collected. 

(j) “Native Format” means and refers to the format of ESI in which it was generated 

and/or as used by the Producing Party in the usual course of its business and in its regularly 

conducted activities. For example, the native format of an Excel workbook is a .xls or .xslx file.

(k) “Optical Character Recognition” or “OCR” means the process of recognizing 

and creating a file containing, visible text within an image.

(l) “Party” or “Parties” means or refers to the named Plaintiffs and/or Lilly in the 

above-captioned matter, as well as any later added plaintiffs or defendants.

(m) “Searchable Text” means the native text extracted from an electronic document 

and any Optical Character Recognition text (“OCR text”) generated from a hard-copy document or 

electronic document.

(n) “Include” and “Including” shall be construed to mean “include but not be limited 

to” and “including, but not limited to”.

3. COOPERATION

The Parties are aware of the importance the Court places on cooperation and commit to 

cooperate in good faith throughout the matter consistent with this Court’s Guidelines for the 

Discovery of ESI. The Parties shall meet and confer in good faith on any issue regarding ESI, as 

necessary, including any relating to custodians and data sources, that arise under this Order. In the 

event the Parties cannot reach an agreement on a disputed matter, the Parties shall submit the matter 

to the Court in accord with local rules. 

4. LIAISON

The Parties have identified liaisons to each other who are and will be knowledgeable about 

and responsible for discussing their respective Party’s ESI efforts. Each e-discovery liaison will be, 

or have access to those who are, knowledgeable about the technical aspects of the Party’s e-discovery 

systems, including the location, nature, accessibility, format, collection, search methodologies, and 

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production of ESI in this matter. The Parties will rely on the liaisons, as needed, to confer about ESI 

and to help resolve disputes without court intervention. 

5. PRESERVATION 

The Parties represent that they have issued litigation hold notices and taken reasonable steps 

to preserve data in this litigation. The Parties shall maintain, preserve, and not render less reasonably 

accessible documents which may contain responsive data, or are produced pursuant to this Order 

and/or in response to requests for production of documents. 

6. IDENTIFICATION OF DOCUMENTS AND ESI 

The Parties agree to meet and confer to discuss (a) the identification of custodial and noncustodial data sources, and (b) additional parameters for scoping the review and production efforts 

(e.g., application of date ranges, de-NIST’ing, etc.). 

With respect to custodial files, the Parties will (a) identify and select custodians most likely 

to possess relevant documents pursuant to any Pretrial Orders entered by the Court governing 

discovery; and (b) apply agreed-upon search terms to those custodians’ data sources. The Parties 

shall first exchange search terms, then meet and confer to discuss the search terms and the proper 

methodology for validating those search terms (such as sampling of documents that do not hit on 

the search terms). The selection of search terms may need to be iterative. 

The Producing Party may review all hard-copy and electronic documents that contain any 

agreed-upon search terms for responsiveness and privilege prior to production. The fact that a 

document may have been retrieved by application of any agreed-upon search terms shall not prevent 

the Producing Party from withholding the document for lack of responsiveness or privilege. 

No specific document of which the Producing Party is aware and knows to be responsive 

shall be withheld from production because it was not identified as responsive by the agreed 

methodologies or was not within an identifiable data repository or custodial or non-custodial data 

source.

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7. PRODUCTION FORMAT AND PROCESSING SPECIFICATIONS 

(a) Production Format. Unless otherwise specified in Section 7(b) or pursuant to 

Section 7(k) below, the Parties shall produce all documents in black-and-white, single page, 300 

DPI, tagged image file format (“TIFF”) images, utilizing Group IV compression, with corresponding 

extracted or OCR text and, to the extent possible, applicable metadata as specified in Exhibit A. 

Image file names will be identical to the corresponding Bates numbered images, with a “.tif” file 

extension. The Producing Party will brand all TIFF images in the lower right-hand corner with its 

corresponding Bates number, using a consistent font type and size, to the extent possible. The Bates 

number must not obscure any part of the underlying image. If the placement in the lower right-hand 

corner will result in obscuring the underlying image, the Bates number should be placed as near to 

the position as possible while preserving the underlying image.

(b) Native Format. The Parties shall produce Excel spreadsheets, audio files, and video 

files in native format, unless redacted, with applicable metadata as specified in Exhibit A and 

extracted searchable text. If production in native format is necessary to decipher the meaning, 

context, or content of a Word or PowerPoint document produced in TIFF, the Producing Party will 

honor reasonable requests made in good faith for the production of specific documents in native 

format.

(c) Embedded Objects. If documents contain embedded objects, the Parties shall 

extract the embedded objects as separate documents and treat them like attachments to the 

document. To the extent reasonably possible, images embedded in emails shall not be extracted and 

produced separately.

(d) Load Files. Every document referenced in a production image load file must have 

all corresponding images, text, and applicable metadata as specified in Exhibit A. The name of the 

image load file must mirror the name of the delivery volume and should have a .LFP, .OPT, or 

.DII extension. The volume names must be reasonably consecutive (e.g., ABC001, ABC002). The 

load file must contain one line per image. Every image in the delivery volume must be contained 

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in the image load file. The image key must be named the same as the Bates number of the image. 

Load files must not span across media.

(e) Foreign Language Documents. Hard-copy documents and ESI that contain 

languages other than English, in whole or in part, shall be produced in the original language(s), 

along with all existing translations of the searchable text maintained in the ordinary course of 

business.

(f) Text Files. A single text file shall be provided for each document. The text file 

name shall be the same as the Bates number of the first page of the document to which it 

corresponds. Files names shall not have any special characters or embedded spaces. Electronic text 

must be extracted directly from the native electronic file unless the document requires redaction, is 

an image file, or is any other native electronic file that does not contain text to extract (e.g., nonsearchable PDFs). In these instances, a text file will be created using OCR and will be produced in 

lieu of extracted text. Except in the case of redacted documents, the Receiving Party will not be 

required to rely upon a less accurate version of the text than the Producing Party.

(g) TIFFs of ESI. TIFFs of ESI shall convey the same information and image as the 

original document, including all non-redacted elements and formatting.

(h) Bates Numbers. All Bates numbers will consist of a three digit Alpha Prefix, 

followed immediately by an 8 digit numeric: AAA########. There must be no spaces in the 

Bates number. Any numbers with less than 8 digits will be front padded with zeros to reach the 

required 8 digits.

(i) Metadata Fields and Processing. Each of the metadata fields set forth in Exhibit 

A that can be reasonably extracted from ESI will be produced for each document. If a Party 

becomes aware of a systemic issue extracting or processing metadata, the Party shall notify all 

other Parties and they shall meet and confer to arrive at a mutually acceptable resolution of the 

issue. The Parties are not obligated to populate manually any of the metadata fields in Exhibit A if 

such fields cannot be extracted from a document.

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(j) Native File Image Placeholders. A Bates-stamped placeholder TIFF, bearing the 

legend “This document has been produced in native format” shall be provided for ESI produced in 

native format; these placeholders will be Bates numbered in the same way as any other TIFF, and 

the Bates number of that single page shall be used as the BegBates and EndBates of the associated 

document.

(k) Databases, Structured, Aggregated or Application Data. The Parties will meet 

and confer to address the production and production format of any responsive data contained in a 

database or other structured or aggregated data source.

(l) Scanning of Hard-Copy Documents. The Parties may produce hard-copy 

documents either in their hard-copy form or as scanned images. In scanning paper documents, 

documents are to be produced as they are kept. For documents found in folders or other containers 

with labels, tabs, or other identifying information, such labels and tabs shall be scanned where 

practicable. The Parties will use best efforts to unitize documents.

(m) Proprietary Software. To the extent that relevant ESI cannot be rendered or 

reviewed without the use of proprietary software, the parties shall meet and confer to ensure that 

the data is produced in a format, or made accessible in a manner, that does not restrict the 

receiving party’s ability to utilize the data fully and to minimize any expense or burden associated 

with the production of such documents in such format or access to such data in such manner.

(n) Confidentiality Treatment. The Parties have entered into a Stipulated Protective 

Order in this matter, which specifies various confidentiality treatment levels for use in this matter. 

The Producing Party will brand any confidentiality endorsements in a corner of any TIFF images 

representing the produced item. Those endorsements must be in a consistent font type and size and 

must not obscure any part of the underlying image or Bates number, to the extent possible.

(o) Redactions. A Party may use redactions to protect attorney-client or attorney work 

product privileges, or consistent with the Protective Order entered in this matter. Other than as 

allowed by the Stipulated Protective Order, no redactions for relevance may be made within a 

produced document or ESI item. For redacted items which were originally ESI, unaffected, nonCase 3:16-md-02691-RS Document 394 Filed 03/23/17 Page 7 of 13
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privileged metadata fields per paragraph 7(i) will be provided and will include all non-redacted 

data. The basis for each redaction must be provided as metadata, except for documents already 

produced as of the date of this Order.

(p) Color. The Parties shall honor reasonable and specific requests for the production 

of documents as color images.

(q) Parent-Child Relationships. Parent-child relationships (the association between 

an attachment and its parent document or between embedded documents and their parent) shall be 

preserved.

(r) Family Relationships. Family relationships often exist between an e-mail and its 

attachments, but can also be found amongst a stand-alone document and files originally contained 

within the parent document, which are subsequently de-embedded as part of discovery processing. 

Non-relevant attachments may be excluded from production. All non-relevant attachments 

excluded from production shall be produced as a slipsheet or placeholder. 

(s) OCR. OCR software should be set to the highest quality setting during processing. 

If the requesting party receives a document where OCR appears not to have captured foreign 

language characters, the requesting party may raise this issue with the producing party, which will 

make reasonable efforts to return the “re-OCRed” text within 30 days as long as the volume 

involved is fewer than 1,000 pages. The Parties will meet and confer if the volume involved is 

greater than 1,000 pages. Settings such as “auto-skewing” and “auto-rotation” should be turned 

on during the OCR process. 

(t) Date Fields Time Zone. All documents shall be processed so as to show fielded 

dates and times in Eastern Time. 

(u) Lost, Destroyed or Irretrievable ESI. If a Producing Party learns that responsive 

ESI that once existed was lost, destroyed, or is no longer retrievable as a result of acts or 

circumstances not occurring in the ordinary course of business, the Producing Party shall comply 

with its obligations under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.` 

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8. PRODUCTION MEDIA 

The Producing Party shall produce documents on readily accessible, computer or electronic 

media as the Parties may hereafter agree upon, including CD-ROM, DVD, external hard drive, or 

via secure FTP site (the “Production Media”). Each piece of Production Media shall be assigned a 

production number or other unique identifying label corresponding to the date of the production of 

documents on the Production Media as well as the sequence of the material in that production. The 

Producing Party shall accompany all document productions with a transmittal cover letter 

identifying by Bates number the documents produced. 

9. PRIVILEGE LOG 

Within sixty (60) days after production absent agreement of the Parties, the Producing Party 

shall provide the Receiving Party with a log of the documents entirely withheld from production 

for a claim of attorney-client privilege, work product protection, or other applicable privilege or 

immunity, as provided for under the Court’s pretrial orders related to Discovery and Other 

Proceedings Related to General Causation. The log will be produced in Excel or CSV format, and 

populated with the following extracted metadata fields, to the extent providing this information will 

not destroy privilege: Custodian, From, To, CC, BCC, Subject, File Name, File Extension, Date 

Sent, Date Created, Date Last Modified. An e-mail thread may be logged as a single entry. Log 

entries for emails that are accompanied by attachment(s) must note the existence of the 

attachment(s) and provide a unique ID for each separate document. If an email thread contained in 

a single document contains both privileged and nonprivileged emails, the privileged emails shall be 

redacted and the document shall be produced, rather than the entire document being withheld as 

privileged. The log also will provide the privilege(s) claimed. In-house attorney names shall be 

designated with an asterisk; outside counsel attorney names will be designated with a double 

asterisk. 

10. INADVERTENT DISCLOSURE 

The Parties agree that they do not intend to disclose information subject to a claim of 

attorney-client privilege or attorney work product protection. If, nevertheless, a Producing Party 

inadvertently discloses privileged or work product information to another party, such disclosure 

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shall not constitute or be deemed a waiver or forfeiture of any claim of attorney-client privilege or 

work product protection that the Producing Party would otherwise be entitled to assert with respect 

to the inadvertently disclosed information and its subject matter. 

If the Producing Party notifies the Receiving Party of the inadvertently disclosed documents 

or information, the Receiving Party shall return or destroy, within fourteen (14) business days, all 

copies of such documents or information and upon written request provide a certification of 

counsel that all such inadvertently disclosed documents or information have been returned or 

destroyed. After a Producing Party provides written notice of inadvertent production, a Receiving 

Party shall not copy, distribute, or otherwise use in any manner the inadvertently disclosed 

documents or information, and shall notify all persons to whom the Receiving Party has 

disseminated a copy of the inadvertently disclosed documents or information that the documents or 

information are subject to this Order and may not be copied, distributed, or otherwise used pending 

further notice from the Court. 

11. COST SHIFTING 

Generally, the costs of production pursuant to this Order shall be borne by the Producing 

Party. However, the Court may apportion the costs of electronic discovery in accordance with the 

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 

12. MODIFICATION

This Stipulated Order may be modified by a Stipulated Order of the Parties or by the Court 

for good cause shown. 

IT IS SO STIPULATED, through Counsel of Record.

Dated: March 22, 2017 /s/ Ernest Cory 

Ernest Cory (Admitted Pro Hac Vice)

Alabama Bar No.: asb-2279-y83e 

CORY WATSON, P.C. 

2131 Magnolia Avenue 

Birmingham, AL 35205 

Telephone: (205) 328-2200 

Facsimile: (205) 324-7896 

Email: ecory@corywatson.com 

Lead Counsel for Plaintiffs 

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Dated: March 22, 2017 /s/ Michael X. Imbroscio 

Michael X. Imbroscio (Admitted Pro Hac Vice)

District of Columbia Bar No.: 445474 

COVINGTON & BURLING LLP 

One CityCenter 

850 Tenth Avenue, NW 

Washington, DC 20001 

Telephone: (202) 662-6000 

Facsimile: (202) 778-6000 

Email: mimbroscio@cov.com 

Lead Counsel for Defendant, Eli Lilly 

and Company 

IT IS ORDERED that the forgoing Agreement is approved. 

Dated: 

RICHARD SEEBORG 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

3/23/17

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EXHIBIT A: FIELDS AND METADATA TO BE PRODUCED

Field Definition Doc Type 

BEGBATES Beginning Bates number (production 

number) 

All

ENDBATES Ending Bates number (production number) All 

PAGECOUNT Number of pages in the document All

BEGATTACH First Bates number of family range (i.e. Bates 

number of the first page of the parent e-mail) 

E-mail 

ENDATTACH Last Bates number of family range (i.e. Bates 

number of the last page of the last attachment) 

E-mail 

FILESIZE File size in KB All 

FILEPATH Original file/path of the location where the 

item was located at the time of collection. 

E-document 

FILEEXT File extension E-document

FILENAME File name E-document 

CUSTODIAN Name of person or other data source (nonhuman) whose documents/files are produced. 

Where redundant names occur, individuals 

should be distinguished by an initial which is 

kept constant throughout productions (e.g., 

SmithJA or Smith, John A.). 

All

FROM Sender E-mail 

TO Recipient E-mail 

CC Additional Recipients E-mail 

BCC Blind Additional Recipients E-mail

SUBJECT Subject line of e-mail E-mail 

DATESENT Date sent (mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss AM) E-mail 

DATECREATED Date file was created E-document 

LASTMODIFIED Last modified date E-document 

HASHVALUE MD5 hash value All 

PARENT_ATTACHMENT “P” for parent; “A” for attachment. E-mail 

REDACTED Redaction status. “Yes” for redacted 

documents; “No” for un-redacted documents. 

All

CONFIDENTIALITY Confidentiality level if assigned. All 

NATIVEFILELINK For documents provided in native format 

only

All

TEXTPATH File path for OCR or Extracted Text files All

EMAILFOLDER Folder location where the email was located at 

the time of the collection 

E-mail 

ATTACHCOUNT Number of attachments to an e-mail E-mail 

ATTACHNAMES Names of each individual Attachment, 

separated by semi-colons

E-mail 

TITLE Internal document title property E-document 

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Field Definition Doc Type 

DATERCVD (mm/dd/yyyy 

hh:mm:ss AM) 

Date Received E-mail 

AUTHOR Internal document property E-document 

LASTMODIFIEDBY Internal document property E-document 

DOCUMENTTYPE Descriptor for the type of document: "Edocument" for electronic documents not 

attached to e-mails; "E-mail" for all e-mails; "Eattachment" for files that were attached to emails; and "Physical" for hard copy physical 

documents that have been scanned and converted 

to an electronic image. 

All

Redaction Reason The reason(s) for redaction of a document. All 

ProdVol Production Volume All 

Importance Y if High Importance Email 

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