Opinion ID: 895162
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: This case differs from Honza

Text: We understand the trial court's predicament, as state law in this area is not clearly defined and the parties' discovery postures shed more heat than light upon the situation. That being the case, the trial court apparently followed the protocol set forth in the only Texas case to address a similar situation. See Honza, 242 S.W.3d 578. In Honza, A & W Development, L.L.C. assigned to Wesley F. Honza and Robert A. Honza the right to purchase a tract of land under a real estate contract. Id. at 579. Under the terms of the assignment, A & W retained the right to purchase a portion of the assigned tract for construction of a street. Id. According to A & W, an earlier version of the assignment made no mention of a purchase price upon exercise of the right because the consideration negotiated for the partial assignment included what the Honzas should receive for the street. Id. When A & W decided to exercise its right, the Honzas demanded that A & W pay additional consideration. Id. at 580. A & W sued the Honzas seeking declaratory relief and alleging various theories of recovery. In the course of discovery, the Honzas produced two drafts of the partial assignment in electronic form. Id. at 580, 583. However, they did not produce or otherwise make available metadata [9] associated with those documents. Id. at 580. The first trial resulted in a mistrial, after which A & W moved to gain access to the Honzas hard drives to obtain the metadata necessary to identify the points in time when the partial assignment draft was modified. Id. The trial court granted A & W's motion, crafting a protocol similar to the one ordered in this case. The court of appeals affirmed the trial court's order, id. at 579, and we denied mandamus relief. Despite the undeniable similarities between the Honza order and the one presented here, there are several important distinctions concerning the contexts in which the two orders were granted. First, in Honza, A & W sought metadata associated with two documents that had already been shown to exist; indeed, the Honzas produced those documents in electronic form in response to discovery requests propounded before the first trial. Id. at 580, 583. Because the Honzas were required to preserve that evidence once it had been requested, there was a reasonable likelihood that a search of the Honzas' computers would reveal the information A & W sought. In this case, on the other hand, the potential for successful recovery of the Employees' deleted emails over a two-and-a-half-year period is much less clear. Moreover, in Honza there was a direct relationship between the hard drives sought and A & W's claims. As the court of appeals noted, identification of the points in time when the partial assignment draft was modified directly concerned the issue of whether [the Honzas] altered the partial assignment after the parties concluded their agreement but before the document was presented for execution. Id. at 580. In contrast, although the deleted emails HFG seeks in this case might reveal circumstantial evidence that the representations Weekley made in the Estoppel Certificate were misleading, there is no claim that the Estoppel Certificate itself was tampered with. While we recognize that a more tenuous link between the electronic storage device and the claim itself is not dispositive, it is a factor trial courts should consider. Finally, in Honza there was extensive testimony from A & W's expert about his experience and qualifications before access to the Honzas' computers was ordered. Id. at 583 n. 8. Although Weekley does not directly challenge the qualifications of HFG's forensic experts, nothing was presented to show that the experts were qualified to perform the search given the particularities of the specific storage devices at issue, or that the search methodology would likely allow retrieval of relevant deleted emails. Absent some indication that the experts are familiar with the particularities of the Employees' hard drives, that they are qualified to search those hard drives, and that the proposed methodology for searching those hard drives is reasonably likely to yield the information sought, Honza does not support the trial court's order. We conclude that by ordering forensic examination of Weekley's hard drives without such information, the trial court abused its discretion. See In re CSX Corp., 124 S.W.3d at 152; In re Am. Optical Corp., 988 S.W.2d 711, 714 (Tex.1998). Because the trial court abused its discretion by granting HFG's motion without the requisite showing, we need not reach Weekley's alternative arguments that the search terms the trial court ordered are overly broad, or that the trial court's order improperly requires Weekley to create the equivalent of a privilege log as to irrelevant documents that the search might produce. However, because trial courts should be mindful of protecting sensitive information and utilize the least intrusive means necessary to facilitate discovery of electronic information, the trial court should consider these arguments on remand.