Boehning De Rico 20071205 Ic Mtl

LES LITIGES INTER-JURIDICTIONNELS ET LA GESTION DES DOCUMENTS ÉLECTRONIQUES H. Christopher Boehning - Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP Jean-François De Rico – Langlois Kronström Desjardins SENCRL La gestion stratégique et l’administration de documents électroniques Institut Canadien Montréal – 4 et 5 décembre 2007

I. La communication de documents électroniques dans le contexte d’un litige inter-juridictionnels

Les règles de procédure applicables

La protection des renseignements personnels

Les Blocking Statutes

II. Les exigences des nouvelles règles de procédure fédérales américaines

La conservation et la préservation des documents

Les obligations en cas de litige

I. LA COMMUNICATION DE DOCUMENTS ÉLECTRONIQUES DANS LE CONTEXTE D’UN LITIGE INTER-JURIDICTIONNELS

Les règles de procédure du forum

vs

Les lois du situs des documents

L’obligation de communiquer tous les documents pertinents ( semblance of relevancy)

L’obligation de communiquer les documents que la partie entend invoquer

Les demandes de communication de documents

La protection des renseignements personnels

La communication

La conservation

La communication

Loi sur la Protection des renseignements personnels et les documents électroniques

7(3) Pour l’application de l’article 4.3 de l’annexe 1 (la règle du consentement) et malgré la note afférente, ne peut communiquer de renseignement personnel à l’insu de l’intéressé et sans son consentement que dans les cas suivants :

c) elle est exigée par assignation, mandat ou ordonnance d’un tribunal, d’une personne ou d’un organisme ayant le pouvoir de contraindre à la production de renseignements ou exigée par des règles de procédure se rapportant à la production de documents;

Voir aussi:

Loi sur la Protection des renseignements personnels dans le secteur privé ,L.R.Q. c. P-39.1, art. 18(6)

Mccue c. Younes, 2002 CanLII 30581 (QCCS)

BMG Canada Inc. c. John Doe , [2005] 4 C.F. 81

La conservation

Le principe 5 énoncé en annexe de la Loi prévoit:

On ne doit conserver les renseignements personnels qu’aussi longtemps que nécessaire pour la réalisation des fins déterminées.

Les lois prohibant la communication

Loi sur les dossiers d'entreprises

2. Sous réserve de l'article 3, nul ne peut, à la suite ou en vertu d'une réquisition émanant d'une autorité législative, judiciaire ou administrative extérieure au Québec, transporter ou faire transporter, ou envoyer ou faire envoyer, d'un endroit quelconque au Québec à un endroit situé hors de celui-ci, aucun document ou résumé ou sommaire d'un document relatif à une entreprise.

Walsh c. Gaitan & Cusack , 1993 CanLII 4101 (QC C.A.)

Hunt c. T&N plc , [1993] 4 R.C.S. 289.

II. LES STRATÉGIES À ADOPTER EN MATIÈRES DE CONSERVATION ET DE COMMUNICATION DE DOCUMENTS ÉLECTRONIQUES POUR SE CONFORMER AUX NOUVELLES RÈGLES DE PROCÉDURE AMÉRICAINES

II. STRATEGIES FOR LITIGATION, DOCUMENT RETENTION AND DOCUMENT PRESERVATION UNDER THE NEW RULES

Introduction

Mapping Information Systems

Document Retention Policies

What to Do When Litigation Commences

Strategies Once A Litigation is Underway

Wrap Up and Q&A

The Amended Rules

Early Planning and Discussion

Rule 16(b): Initial Pre-Trial Conference

Rule 26(a), 26(b)(2), 26(b)(5), 26(f): Initial Disclosures

Rule 33: Interrogatories

Rule 34: Production of Documents

Rule 37(f): The "Safe Harbor"

Rule 45: Subpoenas

Strategies for Litigation, Document Retention and Document Preservation Under the New Rules

Survey from ComputerWorld, just prior to Dec.1, 2006:

About 42 percent of the 170 IT Managers and staff surveyed

said they did not know the status of their company's

preparedness for the new rules, while 32 percent said their

company was not at all prepared. 15 percent they were

half-way prepared and 5 percent they were prepared.

Identify a Senior IT Representative to Oversee

and Coordinate Litigation Strategies

Retention

Preservation

Coordination of Holds

Meet and Confer

Discovery Searches

Potential 30(b)(6) Witness

What is Mapping Information Systems?

A comprehensive picture of a company's technology architecture

A detailed representation of the type and location of all data throughout a company

Policies and Procedures for employment changes and technology changes

A comprehensive picture of the type and location of all data throughout a company

Servers – both those with active and dynamic data, such as file servers and e-mail and voicemail servers, instant messaging

Data Management Systems – back-up tapes, financial systems, disaster recovery systems

Devices – desktop/laptops, PDAs, cell phones

Portable Media – flash drives, hard drives, CD/DVDs

Hosted Data – payroll systems

Third Party Vendors – spam filtering

Sample Architecture Map

Sample Data Map

Sample Data Map

Policies and Procedures for Employment Changes and Technology Changes

New Employees and Departing Employees

What happens to former employees' shared drives, e-mail and computers?

New Technologies and "Upgrades"

How does a technology upgrade change where and what information is being saved?

What happens to older computers, for example, has a VP's laptop been bequeathed to someone else?

Companies Must Have A Document Retention Policy

No need to keep everything

"Document retention policies, which are created in part to keep certain information from getting into the hands of others, including the Government, are common in business … It is, of course, not wrongful, for a manager to instruct his employees to comply with a valid document retention policy under ordinary circumstances." Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States , 544 U.S. 696, 704 (2005).

Too costly and burdensome

The Sedona Guidelines: Best Practice Guidelines &

Commentary for Managing Information & Records in the

Electronic Age

1. An organization should have reasonable policies and procedures for managing its information and records.

1.c. Defensible policies need not mandate the retention of all information and documents.

3. An organization need not retain all electronic information ever generated or received.

3.a. Destruction is an acceptable stage in the information life cycle; an organization may destroy or delete electronic information when there is no continuing value or need to retain it.

3.b. Systematic deletion of electronic information is not synonymous with evidence spoliation.

What Kind of Retention Policy is Appropriate?

Realistic

Practical

Tailored to your organization

Once You've Adopted a Policy, Then What?

Policy only as good as thoroughness of its implementation

Key is systematic enforcement throughout company

Education of employees

Cannot have periodic, random, or ad hoc enforcement

Why Have a Retention Policy?

Reduces cost of maintaining information

Justifies periodic destruction of documents

May provide a "safe harbor" under new Rule 37(f)

Provides necessary guidance

Steps to Creating a Retention Policy:

Create a cross-functional team

Identify regulatory/legal compliance mandates and draft policy

Build a retention schedule

Determine functional/technical requirements

Select and deploy the technology

Communicate policy and processes

Establish audit/compliance processes

Conclusions

Design document retention program independent of pending or threatened litigation

Implement and enforce it on a routine basis throughout the company

Design it with an eye towards specific needs and obligations of your company

Suspend it when litigation is reasonably foreseeable

What To Do When Litigation Commences

When Do You Institute a Litigation Hold?

Actual notice of litigation or document demand

Litigation "reasonably foreseeable"

What Documents Must be Preserved?

Documents

in existence at the time the duty to preserve documents arises or

created subsequent to that time

that a party knows or reasonably should know are

relevant in the litigation

reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence in the litigation

reasonably likely to be requested during discovery in the litigation or

the subject of a pending discovery request.

See Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC , 220 F.R.D. 212, 217 (S.D.N.Y. 2003).

What Steps Can be Taken to Satisfy The

Duty to Preserve Documents?

Understand the electronic data infrastructure

Implement the litigation hold

Keep records of everything done to satisfy the duty to preserve documents

Implement the Litigation Hold

Identify relevant custodians and repositories of documents and data, including through interviews of persons involved in the subject of the litigation (checklists for these interviews are often helpful)

Notify relevant personnel of litigation hold

Custodians with relevant documents or data

Persons responsible for relevant repositories of documents and data, both on-site and offsite

Information technology personnel

Implement the Litigation Hold

Take affirmative steps to preserve data, including:

Creating a “snapshot" of existing data

Halting the deletion or overwriting of backups, and if possible segregating backups

Making provision for later-created documents

What Are the Potential Consequences of

Failure to Satisfy the Duty to Preserve

Documents?

Criminal prosecution

Regulatory sanctions

Civil sanctions

Monetary sanctions

Evidentiary sanctions

Imposition of higher burdens of proof

Entry of judgment against the offender

Disciplinary sanctions against lawyers

The Ground Rules

Plan ahead

Stay focused

Hide the ball at your peril

Know what you control

Don't over delegate

The Basics

Identify what information exists

Determine the burden and cost of producing information

Identify what you are not willing to search/produce/retrieve

Develop a reasonable search protocol

Identify a preferred production method

Make a proposal

District of Delaware - Default Standard for Discovery of

Electronic Documents ("E-Discovery")

Discovery Conference

Parties shall discuss the parameters of their anticipated e-discovery at the Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(f) conference, as well as at the Fed. R. Civ. P. 16 scheduling conference with the court, consistent with the concerns outlined below. More specifically, prior to the Rule 26(f) conference, the parties shall exchange the following information:

A list of the most likely custodians of relevant electronically stored information, including a brief description of each person’s title and responsibilities.

A list of each relevant electronic system that has been in place at all relevant times (*) and a general description of each system including, but not limited to, the nature, scope, character, organization, and formats employed in each system. The parties should also discuss whether their electronically stored information is reasonably accessible. Electronically stored information that is not reasonably accessible may include information created or used by electronic media no longer in use, maintained in redundant electronic storage media, or for which retrieval otherwise involves undue burden or substantial cost.

(*) For instance, in a patent case, the relevant times for a patent holder may be the date the patent(s) issued or the effective filing date of each patent in suit.

Discovery Conference

The name of the individual responsible for retention of that party’s electronically stored information (.the retention coordinator.), as well as a general description of that party’s retention policies for the systems identified above (see ¶ 7).

The name of the individual who shall serve as that party’s liaison for e-discovery (.e-discovery liaison.) (see ¶ 3).

Provide notice of any problems reasonably anticipated to arise in connection with e-discovery, e.g., email duplication.

To the extent that the state of the pleadings does not permit a meaningful discussion of the above by the time of the Rule 26(f) conference, the parties shall either agree on a date by which this information will be mutually exchanged or submit the issue for resolution by the court at the Rule 16 scheduling conference.

E-Discovery Liaison

In order to promote communication and cooperation between the parties, each party to a case shall designate an e-discovery liaison through which all e-discovery requests and responses shall be made. Regardless of whether the e-discovery liaison is an attorney (in-house or outside counsel), a third party consultant, or an employee of the party, he or she must be:

Familiar with the party’s electronic systems and capabilities in order to explain these systems and answer relevant questions.

Knowledgeable about the technical aspects of e-discovery, including the storage, organization, and format issues relating to electronically stored information.

Prepared to participate in e-discovery dispute resolutions.

The court notes that, at all times, the attorneys of record shall be responsible for compliance with e-discovery requests. However, the e-discovery liaisons shall be responsible for organizing each party’s e-discovery efforts to insure consistency and thoroughness and, generally, to facilitate the e-discovery process.

Search Methodology

If the parties intend to employ an electronic search to locate relevant electronically stored information, the parties shall disclose any restrictions as to the scope and method which might affect their ability to conduct a complete electronic search of such information. The parties shall reach agreement as to the method of searching, and the words, terms, and phrases to be searched with the assistance of the respective e-discovery liaisons, who are charged with familiarity with the parties’ respective systems. The parties also shall reach agreement as to the timing and conditions of any additional searches which may become necessary in the normal course of discovery. To minimize the expense, the parties may consider limiting the scope of the electronic search (e.g., time frames, fields, document types).

Format

If, during the course of the Rule 26(f) conference, the parties cannot agree to the format for production of their electronically stored information, as permitted by Fed. R. Civ. P. 34, such information shall be produced to the requesting party as text searchable image files (e.g., PDF or TIFF), unless unduly burdensome or cost-prohibitive to do so. When a text searchable image file is produced, the producing party must preserve the integrity of the underlying electronically stored information, i.e., the original formatting, the metadata and, where applicable, the revision history. After initial production in text searchable image file format is complete, a party must demonstrate particularized need for production of electronically stored information in native format.

Retention

Within the first 30 days of discovery, the parties should work towards an agreement (akin to the standard protective order) that outlines the steps each party shall take to segregate and preserve the integrity of all relevant electronically stored information. In order to avoid later accusations of spoilation, a Fed. R. Civ. P. 30 (b)(6) deposition of each party's retention coordinator may be appropriate.

The retention coordinator shall:

Take steps to ensure that e-mail of identified custodians shall not be permanently deleted in the ordinary course of business and that all other electronically stored information maintained by the identified custodians shall not be altered.

Provide notice as the criteria used for spam/virus filtering of e-mail and attachments; e-mail and attachments filtered out by such systems shall be deemed non-responsive as long as the criteria underlying the filtering are reasonable. Within 7 days of identifying relevant custodians, the retention coordinators shall implement the above procedures, and each party's counsel shall file a statement of compliance as such with the court.

Accessible v. Inaccessible

Active, online data ( i.e. hard drives)

Near-line data (data in some sort of automated retrieval system)

Offline storage data (involving manual intervention to retrieve)

Backup tapes (compressed backups used for emergency data retrieval)

Erased, fragmented, or damaged data

"In civil cases, I've instructed law firms directly that they are to

conduct the discovery of documents themselves and not have

corporate counsel conduct that discovery. They're representing

the client in the courtroom. And in-house counsel is not. They're

making a representation to the Court that the documents are, in

fact, the true documents that are requested in discovery. Not in-

house counsel. And they cannot rely on them. In-house counsel

has other loyalties. They can lose their job if they disclose them.

Outside counsel, it's true, the firm can lose the representation,

but if we're going to have independence in the bar and rely on the

bar, we've got to have them do the work…"

Transcript of hearing at 15, United States v. Cardoso , 05 CR 563 (RPP),

(Sept. 20, 2006).

Make A Proposal

List sources you propose to search/retrieve and those you do not propose to search/retrieve

When appropriate, identify search terms you propose to use or request a list of search terms

Suggest format for production

Managing The Phases of E-Discovery

Collection

Logistics and project management

Be mindful of chain of custody issues

Consider a checklist

Prioritize

Do-it-yourself?

Processing

One size does not necessarily fit all

Different vendors/strategies depending on needs of case

Consider all phases

Form of production?

Reviewing

Develop and implement a review strategy

Artificial Intelligence?

Project management

Producing

Be open with adversaries, regulators, etc.

LES LITIGES INTER-JURIDICTIONNELS ET LA GESTION DES DOCUMENTS ÉLECTRONIQUES H. Christopher Boehning - Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP Jean-François De Rico – Langlois Kronström Desjardins SENCRL La gestion stratégique et l’administration de documents électroniques Institut Canadien Montréal – 4 et 5 décembre 2007