Rio Tinto PLC v. Vale S.A.

306 F.R.D. 125, 2015 WL 872294, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24996
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedMarch 2, 2015
DocketNo. 14 Civ. 3042(RMB)(AJP)
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 306 F.R.D. 125 (Rio Tinto PLC v. Vale S.A.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Rio Tinto PLC v. Vale S.A., 306 F.R.D. 125, 2015 WL 872294, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24996 (S.D.N.Y. 2015).

Opinion

OPINION & ORDER

Predictive Coding a.k.a. Computer Assisted Review a.k.a. Technology Assisted Review (TAR)—Da Silva Moore Revisited

ANDREW J. PECK, United States Magistrate Judge:

It has been three years since my February 24, 2012 decision in Da Silva Moore v. Publi-cis Groupe & MSL Grp., 287 F.R.D. 182 (S.D.N.Y.2012) (Peck, M.J.), affd., 2012 WL 1446534 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 26, 2012). In Da Silva Moore, I stated:

This judicial opinion now recognizes that computer-assisted review [i.e., TAR] is an acceptable way to search for relevant ESI in appropriate cases.

Da Silva Moore, 287 F.R.D. at 183. I note that while the terms predictive coding and computer assisted review still are used, technology assisted review, or TAR, now seems to be the preferred term of art. I concluded the Da Silva Moore opinion by stating:

This Opinion appears to be the first in which a Court has approved of the use of computer-assisted review. That does not mean computer-assisted review must be used in all cases, or that the exact ESI protocol approved here will be appropriate in all future eases that utilize computer-assisted review. Nor does this Opinion endorse any vendor ..., nor any particular computer-assisted review tool. What the Bar should take away from, this Opinion is that computer-assisted review is an available tool and should be seriously considered for use in large-data-volume eases where it may save the producing party (or both parties) significant amounts of legal fees in document review. Counsel no longer have to worry about being the “first” or “guinea pig” for judicial acceptance of computer-assisted review. As with keywords or any other technological solution to edis-covery, counsel must design an appropriate [127]*127process, including use of available technology, with appropriate quality control testing, to review and produce relevant ESI while adhering to Rule 1 and Rule 26(b)(2)(C) proportionality. Computer-assisted review now can be considered judicially-approved for use in' appropriate cases.

Da Silva Moore v. Publicis Groupe & MSL Grp., 287 F.R.D. at 193 (emphasis added).

In the three years since Da Silva Moore, the ease law has developed to the point that it is now black letter law that where the producing party wants to utilize TAR for document review, courts will permit it.1 The recent Tax Court decision in Dynamo Holdings Ltd. P’Ship v. Comm’r of Internal Revenue, 143 T.C. 9, 2014 WL 4636526 (T.C. Sept. 17, 2014), is instructive. The Tax Court’s response to being asked to approve the use of TAR was that courts leave it to the parties to decide how best to respond to discovery requests:

[T]he Court is not normally in the business of dictating to parties the process that they should use when responding to discovery. If our focus were on paper discovery, we would not (for example) be dictating to a party the manner in which it should review documents for responsiveness or privilege, such as whether that review should be done by a paralegal, a junior attorney, or a senior attorney. Yet that is, in essence, what the parties are asking the Court to consider—whether document review should .be done by humans or with the assistance of computers. Respondent fears an incomplete response to his discovery. If respondent believes that the ultimate discovery response is incomplete and can support that belief, he can file another motion to compel at that time.

Dynamo Holdings Ltd. P’Ship v. Comm’r of Internal Revenue, 2014 WL 4636526 at *3.2 Reaching the merits, the Tax Court “disagree[d]” with the IRS’s position that TAR was an ‘“unproven technology,’” holding: “In fact, we understand that the technology industry now considers predictive coding to be widely accepted for limiting e-diseovery to relevant documents and effecting discovery of ESI without an undue burden.” Dynamo Holdings Ltd. P’Ship v. Comm’r of Internal Revenue, 2014 WL 4636526 at *5 (citing articles and cases, including Da Silva Moore). For other judicial decisions approving the producing party’s use of TAR, see, e.g., Green v. Am. Modern Home Ins. Co., No. 14-CV-04074, 2014 WL 6668422 at *1 (W.D.Ark. Nov. 24, 2014); Aurora Coop. Elevator Co. v. Aventine Renewable Energy-Aurora W. LLC, No. 12 Civ. 0230, Dkt. No. 147 (D.Neb. Mar. 10, 2014); Edwards v. Nat’l Milk Producers Fed’n, No. 11 Civ. 4766, Dkt. No. 154: Joint Stip. & Order (N.D.Cal. Apr. 16, 2013); Bridgestone Am., Inc. v. IBM Corp., No. 13-1196, 2014 WL 4923014 (M.D.Tenn. July 22, 2014)3; Fed. [128]*128Hous. Fin. Agency v. HSBC N.A. Holdings, Inc., 11 Civ. 6189, 2014 WL 584300 at *3 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 14, 2014); EORHB, Inc. v. HOA Holdings LLC, No. Civ. A. 7409, 2013 WL 1960621 (Del.Ch. May 6, 2013)4; In re Actos (Pioglitazone) Prods. Liab. Litig, No. 6:11-MD-2299, 2012 WL 7861249 (W.D.La. July 27, 2012) (Stip. & Case Mgmt. Order); Global Aerospace Inc. v. Landow Aviation LP, No. CL 61040, 2012 WL 1431215 (Va.Cir. Ct. Apr. 23, 2012).

One TAR issue that remains open is how transparent and cooperative the parties need to be with respect to the seed or training set(s). In Da Silva Moore, defendant MSL volunteered such transparency, confirming that “ ‘[a]ll of the documents that are reviewed as a function of the seed set, whether [they] are ultimately coded relevant or irrelevant, aside from privilege, will be turned over to’ plaintiffs.” Da Silva Moore, 287 F.R.D. at 187; see also id. at 192 (“This Court highly recommends that counsel in future cases be willing to at least discuss, if not agree to, such transparency in the computer-assisted review process.”). In In re Actos, 2012 WL 7861249 at *4, the parties’ protocol had “experts” from each side simultaneously reviewing and coding the seed set. In Bridgestone, 2014 WL 4923014 at *1, the plaintiff had offered to provide the responsive and non-responsive seed set documents to IBM and Judge Brown stated that he “expects full openness in the matter.”5 And in Fed. Hous. Fin. Agency v. HSBC, in a decision from the bench on July 24, 2012, Judge Cote required transparency and cooperation, including giving the plaintiff full access to the seed set’s responsive and non-responsive documents (except privileged). In contrast, in the second Biomet decision, 2013 WL 6405156 at *1, *2, Judge Miller said that he could find no authority that would allow him to requh’e Biomet to share seed set documents with plaintiffs’ counsel, but suggested that Biomet rethink its opposition to doing so. Thus, where the parties do not agree to transparency, the decisions are split and the debate in the discovery literature is robust. See, e.g., John M. Faceiola & Philip J. Favro, Safeguarding the Seed Set: Why Seed Set Documents May Be Entitled To Work Product Protection, 8 Fed. Cts. L.Rev. 1 (2015).

If the TAR methodology uses “continuous active learning” (CAL) (as opposed to simple passive learning (SPL) or simple active learning (SAL)), the contents of the seed set is much less significant. See generally Gordon V. Cormack & Maura R. Grossman, Evaluation of Machine Learning Protocols for Technology-Assisted Review in Electronic Discovery, in Proceedings of the 37th Int’l ACM SIGIR Conf.

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Bluebook (online)
306 F.R.D. 125, 2015 WL 872294, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24996, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rio-tinto-plc-v-vale-sa-nysd-2015.