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This Week in eDiscovery: Industry Experts Weigh in on 2024 Predictions and a Discovery Violation Leads to a Vacated Judgment and New Trial
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Every week, the Array team reviews the latest news and analysis about the evolving field of eDiscovery to bring you the topics and trends you need to know. This week’s blog covers the week of January 15-21. Here’s what’s happening.
Array’s eDiscovery predictions
It's the season when industry leaders share their forecasts for 2024, and we made some predictions that we think will prominently unfold throughout the year.
Julia Helmer, Array’s Client Solutions Director, made two predictions. First, in Legaltech News’ article on 2024 eDiscovery predictions, she said: “In 2024, legal tech and eDiscovery will focus on utilizing predictive AI to hone in on document productions. Rather than large data dumps with thousands of false positives, productions will be more focused on the key documents, and AI will help with identifying, removing and redacting privileged materials to avoid accidental disclosures and clawbacks.”
On her LinkedIn, Julia had more to say on the topic: “I predict that we will move away from the ‘Document Dump’ technique in favor of more targeted and thoughtful disclosures with the use of GenAI assisted by evolving CAL technologies. This practice should allow for more harmonious dealings between opposing parties and reduce cost in identifying the key documents for downstream case proceedings.”
Discovery violation leads to new trial
Bloomberg Law reported on a discovery violation in a Civil Rights case that a federal appeals court ruled entitles the plaintiff to a new trial after he originally lost the lawsuit. In Morgan v. Tincher, the plaintiff alleged he was battered by a West Virginia police officer, resulting in serious injuries. The plaintiff filed a discovery request asking if Tincher was involved in other excessive force cases, but 10 days after the trial court’s deadline.
The plaintiff discovered before trial that there had been an excessive force lawsuit against Tincher but a second lawsuit wasn’t discovered until Morgan’s trial ended with a jury vote in favor of the defendant.
Bloomberg reported that the district court held that Morgan’s discovery request was untimely and Tincher was relieved from his duty to supplement his discovery responses. But the Fourth Circuit ruled that Morgan’s questions clearly asked if Tincher was involved in similar suits and he forfeited any argument about the timeliness of Morgan’s discovery request by failing to object before answering the interrogatories.
As Michael Berman writes on the EDRM blog, “Morgan demonstrates: (1) the need for timely discovery requests; (2) the importance of specific and timely objections to discovery; and, (3) that “hide the ball” tactics won’t work.”
Other recent eDiscovery news and headlines:
- The Case for the Use of E-Discovery Software in All Matters (The Legal Intelligencer)
- “Self-Collection” May Be Reasonable Using Ralph Losey’s Dual-Protection System (EDRM blog)
- January's Notable Cases and Events in E-Discovery (Sidley Austin)
