Source: http://bowtielaw.com/2009/03/31/magistrate-judge-pecks-search-term-wake-up-call/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 12:12:58+00:00

Document:
This Opinion should serve as a wake-up call to the Bar in this District about the need for careful thought, quality control, testing, and cooperation with opposing counsel in designing search terms or “keywords” to be used to produce emails or other electronically stored information (“ESI”).
The parties in William A. Gross Constr. Assocs. v. Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22903 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 19, 2009) really ticked off Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck.
William A. Gross Constr. Assocs. v. Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co., is a construction defect and delay case involving the Bronx County Hall of Justice. The parties were in a dispute over search terms involving a non-party’s email production to separate project emails from non-project emails.
One party proposed a few basic search terms to search the non-party’s email system. The other party provided several thousand terms. The non-party only wanted to produce emails that related to the Bronx County Hall of Justice project. The Court noted this problem could have been avoided if the non-party had referenced the project name in the “re” line of the email messages. William A. Gross Constr. Assocs. v. Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co., 9-10.
This case is just the latest example of lawyers designing keyword searches in the dark, by the seat of the pants, without adequate (indeed, here, apparently without any) discussion with those who wrote the emails. William A. Gross Constr. Assocs. v. Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co., 11.
The Court had to create a key word search methodology, “without adequate information from the parties.” William A. Gross Constr. Assocs. v. Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co., 10. The Court ordered the parties to use the “narrow” terms, variations of the parties names and the names of the personnel involved in the construction. Id.
Judge Peck issued this opinion as a wake up call to lawyers in his district. Judge Peck drove home the point citing both “Bow Tie” Magistrate Judges Paul Grimm and John M. Facciola’s search term opinions from Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc., 250 F.R.D. 251, 260, 262 (D. Md. May 29, 2008); United States v. O’Keefe, 537 F. Supp. 2d 14, 24 (D.D.C. 2008) and Equity Analytics, LLC v. Lundin, 248 F.R.D. 331, 333 (D.D.C. 2008).

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