Autotech Technologies L.P. v. Automationdirect.com, Inc., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23498 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 25, 2008)
In a deposition, plaintiff producer admitted that two customer relationship management databases had not been reviewed. Producer asserted that review of the databases for relevant information would be almost impossible, but one of the software vendors contacted by requestor indicated that information retrieval would be easy. When producer failed to respond, requestor filed a motion to compel, in April, 2007.
Briefing on the motion was suspended when producer proposed that requestor hire a consultant to query the database. After arguing over keywords, the parties finally agreed on a list. The consultant ran the searches, and provided a table of the results to requestor, which indicated the results it wanted printed. Requestor also indicated that it wanted the complete record associated with each result.
When the parties could not agree on a method for review (review at producer’s headquarters v. review at requestor’s facility subject to clawback agreement), the parties went back to court in September, 2007. Requestor’s motion to compel was granted.
Producer produced 10,000 pages of documents generated by the keyword search. The documents were reports of producer’s employees’ conversations with customers. However, the documents lacked contextual information such as employee name, date of communication, source of referral, or other database information. Requestor demanded the additional information, and producer responded that it printed the information asked for by the consultant, which did not include the requested information.
Producer subsequently produced an index of information containing contact person, customer company name, address and reference. The reference field apparently matched a corresponding reference column on the previous production. Requestor objected that it did not include employee name, date of contact or other database information. It also required producer to match the reference field manually, as producer had asserted would be required.
Requestor, in the instant motion, sought to query the database again, at producer’s expense, and sanctions against producer for failure to comply with the September order.
The court found that producer’s production complied with what requestor’s consultant had specified. Since the production complied with what requestor’s consultant had requested, it was not sanctionable. Producer objected that requestor’s request could only be obtained through extensive manual effort and would not produce the result sought by requestor. The court “cannot tell with certainty whether the information now requested was in fact available in the Goldmine database but was not produced as part of the keyword search designed by [requestor]’s consultant.” Id. at *12.
The court required the parties to meet to attempt to resolve how the dates of the communications could be obtained, which would be the only information the court would permit to be produced. Requestor would bear the costs of obtaining the information. If requestor could show that the information could have been obtained by running the protocol designed by requestor’s consultant, but was not produced by producer, then producer would bear all “costs, expenses and attorneys’ fees resulting from nonproduction of the information.” Id. at *13.