Federal Deposit Insurance v. McCaffree

289 F.R.D. 331, 2012 WL 6726406, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 182238
CourtDistrict Court, D. Kansas
DecidedDecember 27, 2012
DocketNo. 11-2447-JAR
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 289 F.R.D. 331 (Federal Deposit Insurance v. McCaffree) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Federal Deposit Insurance v. McCaffree, 289 F.R.D. 331, 2012 WL 6726406, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 182238 (D. Kan. 2012).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

K. GARY SEBELIUS, United States Magistrate Judge.

This matter comes before the court upon Defendants Carl McCaffree’s and Sam McCaffree’s Motion to Compel (ECF No. 80). After the McCaffrees’ motion to compel had been fully briefed, both the McCaffrees and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as receiver of the Columbian Bank and Trust Company (FDIC-R) began filing additional briefs without leave of the court. The briefs provided additional factual information about the discovery dispute before the court. The briefs also updated the court about which parts of the motion to compel were now moot or potentially moot because the FDIC-R had complied with the McCaffrees’ requests. But the briefs also contained additional arguments and disputed positions.

The seven briefs now pertaining to this motion to compel have complicated and prolonged the task of resolving the McCaffrees’ motion. After reviewing all of the filings, it is unclear what, if any, of the discovery dispute remains left to resolve. While the court appreciates and encourages litigants to work together to resolve discovery disputes — even after a party files a motion to compel — the manner in which the McCaffrees and the FDIC-R have chosen to update the court has been less than helpful. In the future, if the parties wish to file additional briefs, they shall first seek leave of the court. If they wish to inform the court that a portion of a motion to compel is now moot, they shall do so through an additional joint filing that clearly outlines which portions of the dispute the parties’ have resolved. Given the briefing on the motion to compel, the court realizes that this memorandum and order may rule on issues the parties have resolved. [333]*333With these considerations in mind, the court turns to the motion to compel, which is granted in part and denied in part for the reasons stated below.

I. Procedural Conference Requirement

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and this district’s local rules require a moving party to confer with opposing counsel about the discovery dispute at issue before filing a motion to compel.1 In this case, both parties have attached correspondence to their motion that memorializes efforts to resolve or narrow this discovery dispute. The court finds that Carl McCaffree and Sam McCaffree have satisfied the procedural conference requirements.

II. Background

FDIC-R, brings this action against former directors and executive officers of the Columbian Bank, alleging the bank suffered losses in excess of $56 million as a result of the defendants’ negligence, gross negligence, and breach of their fiduciary duties regarding the approval of 20 large commercial loans.2 The present discovery dispute concerns the FDIC-R’s obligations in storing, maintaining, retrieving, and producing in discovery documents obtained from Columbian Bank at the time it was closed. At the outset of the discovery phase, the FDIC-R and the remaining defendants — Carl L. McCaffree, Sam McCaffree (the MeCaffrees) and Jimmy D. Helvey — reached an agreement about how electronically stored information (ESI) would be produced. The scheduling order memorializes the agreement. It states in relevant part,

The FDIC has compiled a database of approximately 3.7 million electronically stored documents. These include documents the FDIC obtained from the bank, including documents that were stored on Columbian’s file server and the desktop computers of a number of bank employees and scanned documents. In addition, the database includes documents the FDIC subpoenaed from borrowers following the The FDIC has organized the documents into folders by using search terms, such as the names of the directors and officers of Columbian, the loans referenced in the complaint, and other relevant search terms. After removing duplicate copies of documents, this process has reduced the number of relevant, or potentially relevant, documents to approximately 60,000, divided into folders based upon search terms. Defendants’ counsel have been provided with a list of the search terms used by the FDIC to prepare the folders. closing of the bank.
The parties have agreed that defendants will provide plaintiff with any additional search terms they wish to have applied to the entire database of documents. Unless objected to, additional folders will be prepared based upon the results of those additional search terms. After this has been accomplished, a third-party web hosting service, will make all the folders available for defendants’ counsel to review online using a Web-based service known as Relativity. The parties have agreed to share jointly Relativity’s monthly charges. Copies will be made of documents selected by defendants except for documents that plaintiff believes are privileged. Any such documents will be listed by plaintiff on a privilege log and will not be produced to defendants unless so ordered by the court. All other documents selected by defendants will be number-stamped and will contain language reciting any confidentiality requirements and restrictions imposed by the court.3

To understand the context in which this dispute arises, a brief discussion of the Columbian Bank’s filing systems and the FDIC-R’s efforts in preserving and producing these documents is necessary.

A. Columbian Bank’s Filing Systems

According to the declaration of Mark McCaffree, who served as the vice president of Columbian Bank and sat on its board of directors, the bank utilized a dual-filing sys[334]*334tem for its loans.4 Most loan-related documents were maintained in hard-copy form in a central file at the bank branch where the loan originated. Columbian Bank would also use an electronic document management system called DocStar to store scanned copies of loan documents. The bank’s general practice was to scan all documents in the hard-copy files and then save them into DocStar. But at various points in time, the DocStar files could be incomplete if certain documents had not yet been scanned and saved or if certain documents were inadvertently omitted.

Mark McCaffree’s declaration also states that Columbian Bank maintained a “loan file” for each of its loans. The loan file was stored both within the hard-copy system and within DocStar. In DocStar, an electronic file bearing the borrower’s name would contain individual subfolders for each loan. Generally, these subfolders were named by the loan number. If the borrower had more than one loan at the bank, the bank would also maintain a “master file” containing documents relevant to all of the loans. The bank did this to avoid duplicate documents appearing in each of the respective loan subfolders. Therefore, if there was a master file in existence, the respective loan subfolders likely would not contain all of the records pertinent to those loans.

B. The FDIC’s Efforts to Capture, Store, and Produce Documents

On August 22, 2008, the Office of the State Bank Commissioner of Kansas closed Columbian Bank and appointed the FDIC as receiver of the bank pursuant to 12 U.S.C. § 1821.5

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Bluebook (online)
289 F.R.D. 331, 2012 WL 6726406, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 182238, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/federal-deposit-insurance-v-mccaffree-ksd-2012.