Court declines to order production of metadata, orders evidentiary hearing on spoliation charges

D'Onofrio v. SFX Sports Group, Inc., 2008 WL 189842 (D.D.C. Jan. 23, 2008)

In this contentious employment discrimination case, Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola resolved a number of discovery disputes relating to the production of electronically stored information.

Among other relief, plaintiff sought the production of a certain business plan in its original electronic format, with accompanying metadata.  Plaintiff argued that Fed. R. Civ. P. 34 permits the production of documents outside of their original format only "if necessary," and that in this case, there was no such necessity.  Defendants responded that:  (a) plaintiff did not request that the Business Plan or any other documents be produced in a specific format; (b) production in original electronic format with metadata is not required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or in the absence of a clear agreement or court order, neither of which were present here; and (c) plaintiff had not demonstrated the relevance of the metadata.

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