Thorncreek Apartments III, LLC v. Vill. of Park Forest, में. 8 C 1225, 08-सी-0869, 08-C-4303, 2011 WL 3489828 (एनडी. बीमार. अगस्त. 9, 2011)

The court held that privilege was waived as to inadvertently produced documents where defendants failed to take reasonable steps to prevent disclosure and failed to rectify the error in a timely way.  In so finding, the court cited defendants’ failure to conduct a final check before production, the failure of the process to protect any privilege (all privileged documents were produced), the nine months between production and discovery of the disclosure, and the failure to timely produce a privilege log, अन्य बातों के अलावा.

Defendants had a three-step process to respond to discovery.  First, backup tapes were searched using agreed upon and court-ordered search terms.  The documents identified by the search were then placed by a vendor into an online database for review by defense counsel.  Following that review, documents released by defendants were placed in an online production database for plaintiffs to access.  It was intended that plaintiffs would have access to both responsive and non-responsive documents.  However, defense counsel was “‘under the impression’ that documents . . . marked ‘privileged’ . . . would be automatically withheld from the production database . . . ."

Nine months after production began (and at least two months after it ended), the inadvertent production came to the attention of defendants when plaintiffs attempted to use two privileged documents at deposition, to which defense counsel objected.  Following that deposition, defense counsel contacted plaintiffs’ counsel to inform him that certain privileged documents had been inadvertently produced.  Four months later, defendants produced a privilege log for the first time, which identified 159 documents that had been inadvertently produced.  No other documents were identified as withheld from production.  Thus, it was presumed that all documents identified as privileged during the review had been inadvertently produced.  Plaintiffs claimed that privilege had been waived and the parties were able to independently resolve their disputes as to all but six documents.

के माध्यम से प्रतिवादियों’ “पूरी तरह से निष्प्रभावी” समीक्षा प्रक्रिया और माफी के ढूँढना में एक समय पर मार्ग परिणाम में अनजाने प्रकटीकरण सुधारने में विफलता : इलेक्ट्रॉनिक डिस्कवरी विधि.