Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caed-1_19-cv-01482/USCOURTS-caed-1_19-cv-01482-10/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
E. & J. Gallo Winery
Counter Claimant
Vineyard Investigations
Counter Defendant

Document Text:

ORDER GRANTING STIPULATION REGARDING ESI PROTOCOL

CASE NO. 19-CV-1482

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

FRESNO DIVISION

VINEYARD INVESTIGATIONS,

Plaintiff,

v.

E. & J. GALLO WINERY,

Defendant.

Case No. 19-cv-1482-JLT-SKO

ORDER GRANTING STIPULATION 

REGARDING ELECTRONICALLY 

STORED INFORMATION (“ESI”) 

PROTOCOL

(Doc. 86)

Case 1:19-cv-01482-JLT-SKO Document 87 Filed 11/21/22 Page 1 of 15
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ELECTRONICALLY STORED INFORMATION (“ESI”) 

PROTOCOL

Plaintiff Vineyard Investigations (“VI” or “Plaintiff”) and Defendant E. & J. Gallo 

Winery (“Gallo” or “Defendant”) (collectively, “the Parties”) have, in good faith, met and 

conferred regarding the preservation and production of electronically stored information 

(“ESI”), and have agreed that the terms of this ESI Protocol shall apply for the duration of the 

above captioned case. 

Electronic Discovery 

1. Each Party initially shall bear its own costs of preserving, searching for, and producing 

ESI. The Parties agree that they will meet and confer should a dispute arise regarding 

ESI production, and if the Parties cannot reach an agreement, the Parties will request 

that the Court resolve such disputes.

2. The producing Party shall retain the presumptive right and responsibility to manage and 

control searches of its data files, including the right to use Predictive 

Coding/Technology Assisted Review. All searches shall be reasonable and in 

compliance with the Federal Rules.

3. This ESI Protocol shall apply to all discoverable ESI in the possession, custody, or 

control of the Parties that can be identified and collected by virtue of being stored, in 

the ordinary course of business, in a keyword-searchable electronic format, and that 

can be located after a reasonably diligent search. This ESI Protocol is intended to 

simplify and organize the parties’ search and production of information.

4. The Parties agree that it is not necessary to search for information contained on 

cellular phones, smartphones (e.g., iPhones), tablets (e.g., iPads), or other similar 

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portable devices, and sources not reasonably accessible due to undue burden or cost, 

such as company-issued computers of former employees (not in the producing party’s 

possession, custody, or control), and personal computers; cellular phones, 

smartphones (e.g., iPhones), tablets (e.g., iPads), or other similar portable devices of 

current and former employees, including associated text message apps; external hard 

drives of current and former employees; and voicemail systems, inactive legacy 

computer systems, backup tapes, backup systems, and disaster recovery systems. 

This paragraph does not apply to legacy computer or backup systems that remain in 

active use, unless the work-related data from those computers is stored or 

synchronized to a datacenter or cloud system that can be reasonably searched in lieu 

of searching backup systems. Each Party reserves the right to request that an 

opposing party search such devices or systems provided that the requesting party is 

able to show (1) a particularized and reasonable need for the information contained 

on such devices or systems; and (2) the unavailability of said information from 

alternative sources more easily accessible; and (3) the information sought will not 

impose an undue burden and/or cost on the producing party. The Parties agree to meet 

and confer in good faith should a dispute arise under this Paragraph, and will request 

that the Court resolve any such disputes if agreement cannot be reached.

5. The Parties agree that when comprehensive summary documentation of underlying 

or raw information is reasonably available and relied upon in the ordinary course of 

business, the production of such summary documentation is presumptively sufficient 

for purposes of this litigation only. This agreement does not waive any party’s right 

to pursue the underlying or raw information subject to a case-by-case explanation of 

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need or demonstration by the requesting party that the summary documentation does 

not contain relevant and material information that would exist in the raw information.

6. Consistent with Paragraph 4, the Parties agree that in this litigation voicemail 

messages, random access memory, instant messages and chats, backup tapes, 

information from mobile phones, smart phones or PDAs, including associated text 

messaging apps, and dynamic fields of databases or log files will be considered not 

reasonably accessible under Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(B) and, accordingly, need not 

be searched and will not be subject to production absent a showing of good cause by 

the requesting Party based upon specific facts that demonstrate a particular need for 

such evidence that justifies the burden of retrieval, and further subject to the

producing Party’s claim of undue burden or cost. Subject to Paragraphs 8-9 herein, 

if duplicative responsive documents are located, the producing Party shall not be 

required to search for additional copies of such responsive documents absent a 

showing of good cause that the production of such additional copies is necessary. No 

Party need deviate from the retention practices it normally exercises with regard to 

such voicemail messages, random access memory, instant messages and chats, 

backup tapes, information from mobile phones, smart phones or PDAs (including 

associated text messaging apps), and dynamic fields of databases or log files that are 

not stored or retained in the ordinary course of business when not in anticipation of

litigation.

7. The Parties shall each produce imaged copies of responsive and non-privileged 

electronic and paper documents electronically, Bates- stamped, at a resolution of at

least 300 dots-per-inch (dpi) or at a resolution used in the routine course of electronic 

record retention. Those images shall be produced as single-page or multi-page 

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Tagged Image File Format (“TIFFs” or “.tiff format”) with accompanying text files 

where the original document had native text, or the native file format for excel, access 

database, and other similar files. To the extent it is technically feasible, those image 

files shall include information corresponding to the following:

Field Name Field Description Sample Values

BegBates Bates number for the first 

page of the document

ABC0000001

EndBates Bates number for the last 

page of the document

ABC0000002

BegAttach Bates number for the first page 

of parent document

ABC0000001

EndAttach Bates number for the last 

page of last attachment

ABC0000005

Confidentiality 

Designation

The confidentiality 

designation of the document

Highly Confidential 

– Attorneys’ Eyes 

Only 

HASH The hash value of the 

document

MD5 or SHA-1

Pages Number of printed pages of the 

document

2

Custodian Custodian name Smith, Jane

DuplicateCustodian All custodians who have possession 

of the document

Redacted Descriptor for documents that 

have been redacted. “Yes” for 

redacted documents; “No” for 

non-redacted documents

Yes

DateCreated Document date created mm/dd/yyyy

DateMod Document last known modified date mm/dd/yyyy

TimeCreated Document time created (EST) hh:mm:ss

TimeMod Document last known modified time 

(EST)

hh:mm:ss

Filename The name of a file Filename

Author The Author property of a file John Doe

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Field Name Field Description Sample Values

Extension The file extension Doc

PathToText The relative path to the 

accompanying text file

\Vol001\txt\ABC000

01.txt

PathToNative The relative path to any 

accompanying native file

\Vol001\Natives\AB

C00001.xls

Subject Subject line of Email or Subject value 

of documents

Text of the subject 

line

DocDate Email: Send Date & Time; 

Documents: Last Known Modified 

Date & Time

mm/dd/yyyy 

hh:mm:ss

DateSent Email sent date mm/dd/yyyy

DateRec Email received date mm/dd/yyyy

TimeSent Email sent time (EST) hh:mm:ss

TimeRec Email received time (EST) hh:mm:ss

To All SMTP Address of email 

recipients, separated by a semi-colon

John.smith@email.c

om

From All SMTP address of email Author Bart.smith@email.co

m

CC All SMTP address of email “CC” 

recipients, separated by a semi-colon

Jim.james@gmail.co

m; 

bjones@yahoo.com

8. In addition, a producing Party shall not be required to produce in TIFF format when the 

conversion to image TIFF format would impose unreasonable cost on the producing 

Party and/or would result in unintelligible documents. Under such circumstances, the 

producing Party shall notify the requesting Party within a reasonable time after 

learning of the issue and the Parties shall meet and confer regarding an acceptable 

production format. The Parties agree that applying global de-duplication to their 

productions is reasonable.

9. For purposes of this protocol only, “Duplicate ESI” means files that are exact duplicates 

based on the files’ MD5 or SHA-1 hash values at the family level. A Party is only 

required to produce a single copy of a responsive document and may de-duplicate 

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entire document families horizontally (also referred to as globally) across custodians. 

A metadata field listing all custodians who have possession of the document shall be 

included in the list of metadata fields for produced documents, to the extent it can be 

reasonably determined.

10. When processing ESI, Pacific Standard Time (PST) shall be selected as the time zone.

11. When a Party produces a replacement document, the receiving Party must discard or 

return to the producing Party all copies, including working copies, of the original if 

the document at issue has been replaced based on a claim of privilege. If the 

replacement documents are produced at a different Bates number, the producing party 

will provide a cross-reference file, linking the replacement documents to the original 

Bates. 

12. The Parties shall negotiate separately regarding the production of structured database 

files and shared drives, if any. To the extent the Parties cannot reach agreement as to 

a particular database file or shared drive, the Parties will request that the Court

resolve any disputes in a manner that takes into account the specifics of the files or 

drives in question, the narrowly-tailored needs of the requesting Party, and the 

anticipated burden on the producing Party.

13. While paper documents may necessarily be implicated by certain requests, nothing in 

this paragraph shall be interpreted as imposing any independent obligation upon the 

Parties to produce hard copy documents that are duplicative of electronically stored 

documents. Paper documents included in a Party’s production shall be scanned to 

imaged copies and produced in the same manner specified for electronic documents. 

The imaged copies of scanned paper documents will be logically unitized (i.e., to 

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preserve page breaks between documents and otherwise allow separate documents to 

be identified).

14. To the extent the retrieval of paper documents creates an unreasonable burden or undue 

costs on the producing Party because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 

producing Party agrees to notify the other Party and explain the undue circumstances. 

The Parties agree that they will meet and confer should a dispute arise regarding paper 

document production, and if the Parties cannot reach an agreement, the Parties will 

request that the Court resolve such disputes. 

15. The Parties shall produce a “load file” in some mutually agreeable industry-standard 

format to accompany the images, which load file shall include information about 

where each document begins and ends and parent-child-relationships to facilitate the 

use of the produced images through a document management or litigation support 

system. The Parties shall meet and confer to the extent reasonably necessary to 

facilitate the import and use of the produced materials with commercially available 

document management or litigation support software. The Parties shall meet and 

confer to discuss documents that present imaging or formatting problems. To the 

extent exceptions to the foregoing are required, the Parties will meet and confer to 

discuss alternative production requirements, concerns, or formats.

16. Each page of a produced document shall have a legible, unique numeric identifier Bates 

number not less than eight digits electronically “burned” onto the page at a place on 

the document that does not obscure, conceal or interfere with any information 

originally appearing on the document. The Bates number for each document shall be 

created so as to identify the producing party and the production number (e.g., 

“BETA00000001”). The Bates numbers will be consistent across a producing Party's 

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production, contain no special characters and be numerically sequential within a 

given document. Whenever reasonably possible, attachments to documents will be 

assigned Bates numbers that directly follow the Bates numbers on the documents to 

which they were attached. In addition, whenever possible, each .tiff image will have 

its assigned production number electronically "burned" onto the image. Native 

format documents will be produced with TIFF placeholders.

17. If, by their nature, certain documents are best viewable in their native formats, such as 

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, and other spreadsheet/template configured files, 

and the documents do not contain material protected by the attorney-client privilege, 

work-product doctrine, or any other applicable privilege or immunity, the documents 

shall be produced in native format. A document containing material protected by the 

attorney-client privilege, work-product doctrine, or any other applicable privilege or 

immunity need not be produced in native format; however, a Party will not 

unreasonably withhold such native versions on this basis. The Parties agree that they 

will meet and confer in good faith should a dispute arise regarding the production of 

particular documents. Files produced in native format will be named according to 

the production number it has been assigned (e.g., “BETA00000001.xlxs”), and 

should be linked directly to its corresponding record in the load file using the 

PathToNative field. For each native file produced, the production will include a TIFF 

image slip-sheet indicating the production number of the native file and any 

confidentiality designation, and stating “Produced in Native Format.”

18. The Parties agree that when using any document produced in native format for 

evidentiary purposes (including without limitations at any hearing, deposition, or 

trial), the Party seeking to make such use will provide the production number to the 

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producing party. Any such use shall constitute a representation by the proffering 

Party through its counsel that the file being used is an exact duplicate of the native 

file produced. Should any document produced in native format be printed to .tiff 

format or hard copy, its unique production number and any applicable confidentiality 

designation shall be placed on each page of such TIFF image or hard copy, and the 

use for evidentiary purposes of the TIFF image or hard copy shall constitute a 

representation by the proffering Party through its counsel that the file from which the 

TIFF image or hard copy was created is an accurate and complete representation of 

such file.

19. The Parties agree that they will meet and confer in good faith should a dispute arise 

regarding the production of documents in a particular format.

20. The Parties will accommodate reasonable requests to produce high resolution images if 

a document produced in this litigation is illegible. A producing Party shall not 

unreasonably deny such a request. The Parties agree that they will meet and confer in 

good faith should a dispute arise regarding the production of documents in a particular 

format. 

21. If not otherwise addressed in the Protective Order entered in this case, to the extent that 

a responsive document contains privileged content, the party may produce that 

document in a redacted form. 

22. Any redactions shall be clearly indicated on the face of the document and each page of 

the document from which information is redacted shall bear a designation or clear 

indication that it has been redacted. Where a document contains both privileged and 

non-privileged responsive content the Party shall redact the privileged material and 

produce the remainder of the document as redacted. Only where privileged content 

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requires the majority of the document to be redacted, a Party be exempted from 

producing the document in redacted form. The production of a privileged document 

in a redacted form does not affect the producing Party's obligation to properly 

document and substantiate the assertion of privilege over the content as may be 

reasonably requested.

23. The Parties may use encryption software, such as VeraCrypt, to protect any documents 

produced on electronic media such as DVDs or hard drives. The decryption password 

will be provided at the same time the documents are produced.

Production of E-Mail

24. The Parties agree that e-mail will be searched and produced as follows. To the extent 

the Parties cannot reach agreement, the Parties shall request that the Court resolve 

any disputes.

a. A producing Party need identify no more than five e-mail custodians whose email the producing Party will search, and a date range for that search. Persons 

identified in a party’s disclosures as having knowledge, whose work-related 

email is in the party’s possession, custody, and control, may be identified by the 

other party as among the five e-mail custodians.

b. The producing Party shall identify no more than a total of ten search strings per 

e-mail custodian that will be run on the e-mail files. The parties will direct 

search terms to relevant issues and used to locate potentially responsive emails 

for responsiveness, privilege, and data privacy review. 

c. The Parties agree to meet and confer in good faith regarding any edits to 

custodians, search strings and date ranges.

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d. After the Parties have agreed upon custodians, search strings and date ranges,

the Parties will run the initially identified search strings against the e-mail files 

for the relevant custodian(s) and first provide the number of hits for each search 

string within twenty business days of identifying the custodian and search 

strings. If the number of hits resulting from running the selected search strings 

is unreasonably large, the Parties shall meet and confer to try to resolve the 

dispute (e.g., by mutually agreeing to narrowed search terms or date ranges). 

To determine the appropriate search strings, the Parties will exchange the 

number of hits on modified search strings. The parties will begin producing 

responsive documents based on the final agreed upon search terms within thirty 

calendar days.

e. After the search is conducted, the producing Party may review the responsive1

documents for privilege, confidentiality, and privacy concerns. The producing 

Party may thereafter designate such documents as protected material under the 

Protective Order, or redact or withhold privileged information where 

appropriate, in a manner otherwise consistent with the instant ESI Protocol

regarding the production of documents.

f. The Parties agree that indiscriminate terms, such as the producing company’s 

name, are inappropriate unless combined with narrowing search criteria that 

sufficiently reduce the risk of overproduction. A conjunctive combination of 

multiple words or phrases (e.g., “computer” and “system”) narrows the search 

1 The fact that an electronic file is returned by application of the search queries and the protocols 

used herein does not mean that such document is responsive to any propounded discovery request 

or is otherwise discoverable in this litigation.

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and shall count as a single search term. A disjunctive combination of multiple 

words or phrases (e.g., “computer” or “system”) broadens the search, and thus 

each word or phrase shall count as a separate search term unless they are variants 

of the same word. Use of narrowing search criteria (e.g., “and,” “but not,” 

“w/x”) is encouraged to limit the production.

g. The Parties may jointly agree to modify the limits on the number of custodians 

and/or search terms without leave of the Court. To the extent the Parties are 

unable to reach agreement regarding modifications, the Court may consider 

contested requests for additional or fewer custodians and/or search terms per 

producing Party for good cause shown. 

h. If a Party produces e-mails, e-mail attachments will be produced as independent 

documents immediately following the parent e-mail record. No Party shall be 

required to produce embedded logos and junk files that are embedded in ESI. 

i. For any e-mail produced, fields showing the date and time that the e-mail was 

sent and/or received, as well as the subject of the message and the complete 

distribution list, shall be included with the production of such e-mail to the 

extent such information is available. In addition, parent-child relationships (i.e., 

the associations between e-mails and attachments) will be preserved. E-mail 

attachments will be produced as independent documents immediately following 

the parent e-mail record.

j. Attachments to emails will not be eliminated from their parent emails. 

k. Where multiple email messages are part of a single “thread,” a Party is only 

required to produce the most inclusive message for which no claim of privilege 

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is made, and need not produce earlier, less inclusive email messages that are 

fully contained, including attachments, within the most inclusive email message 

for which no claim of privilege is made. For the avoidance of doubt, only email 

messages for which the parent document and all attachments are contained in 

the more inclusive email message will be considered less inclusive email 

messages that need not be produced; if the later message contains different text 

(such as where the later message adds in-line comments to the body of the earlier 

message), or does not include an attachment that was part of the earlier message, 

the earlier message must be produced.

Dated: November 16, 

2022

Respectfully submitted, 

By:/s/ Darryl M. Woo

Darryl M. Woo

Sanjeet K. Dutta

Jenny J. Zhang

Elizabeth J. Low

GOODWIN PROCTER LLP

Timothy J. Buchanan

Shane G. Smith

MCCORMICK, BARSTOW, SHEPPARD, 

WAYTE & CARRUTH LLP

Attorneys for Defendant

E. & J. Gallo Winery

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Dated: November 16, 

2022

Respectfully submitted, 

By:/s/ Corey Johanningmeier (as authorized 

11/15/2022)

Corey Johanningmeier (SBN 251297)

Brenda Entzminger (SBN 226760)

Denise De Mory (SBN 168076)

BUNSOW DE MORY LLP

701 El Camino Real

Redwood City, CA 94063

Tel.: (650) 351-7248

Fax: (415) 426-4744

cjohanningmeier@bdiplaw.com

benzminger@bdiplaw.com

ddemory@bdiplaw.com

Attorneys for Plaintiff 

Vineyard Investigations

ORDER

For good cause shown, the Court hereby approves and orders the ESI collection and 

production protocol pursuant to the parties’ stipulation (Doc. 86) set forth above.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: November 21, 2022 /s/ Sheila K. Oberto .

UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

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