November 27, 2024 • 29 mins
Ever wondered how the nuances of electronic discovery could make or break a legal case? Discover the pivotal role of document production and organization as host Kelly Twigger guides you through the intricacies of eDiscovery in this week's Case of the Week podcast. Gain insights from the Partners Insight LLC versus Gill case, emphasizing why clarity in document production requests is a must to avoid legal squabbles. Learn about the surprising breadth of eDiscovery case law, which transcends jurisdictional lines, and why district and state court decisions often hold more sway due to the scarcity of appellate rulings.
Unearth the ongoing debate over TIFF versus native formats and why preserving metadata can be the linchpin in your legal strategy. Unpack how differing interpretations of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure can tip the scales and the importance of keeping ESI in its original context. Twigger explores effective strategies for managing discovery costs and highlights the importance of precisely negotiating your data formats at the outset. Delve into key cases like Teledyne Instruments and gain expert perspectives that could transform how you approach eDiscovery. Don’t miss this compelling discussion that promises to keep you ahead in the fast-evolving landscape of electronic discovery.
Partners Insight, LLC v. Gill
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Thank you for tuning in to Case of the Week with Kelly Twigger. If you found today’s discussion helpful, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. For more insights and resources on ediscovery, visit Minerva26 and explore our practical tools, case law library, and on-demand education from the Academy. Join us next episode as we break down another important case shaping the future of ediscovery.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kelly Twigger (00:14):
Welcome to the Case of the Week podcast, where
each week, we break down arecent decision in electronic
discovery case law and talkabout the practical impact for
you and your clients and keepyou up to date on your
obligations with electronicallystored information as evidence.
If you're a litigator, legalprofessional or you love the
power of ESI as much as I do,this is the place to be.
(00:35):
I'm Kelly Twigger, the CEO andfounder of eDiscovery Assistant
and the principal at ESIAttorneys, with more than 25
years of experience navigatingthe evolving landscape of
litigation and e-discovery.
I'm a practicing attorney,author, speaker, entrepreneur
and now podcaster who works as adiscovery strategist and expert
for clients at ESI Attorneysand to provide that knowledge to
(00:58):
all legal professionals throughour e-discovery assistant
platform.
In each episode, we'll tackle anew decision in eDiscovery case
law and how it shapes both yourlitigation strategy and
planning for risk mitigation.
If you're ready for blunt,actionable insights that keep
you ahead of the curve, andmaybe a few laughs along the way
, this is your go-to podcast.
(01:19):
Subscribe or follow now tostart embracing the power of ESI
as evidence.
Hi and welcome to this week'sepisode of the Case of the Week
series brought to you byeDiscovery Assistant, your GPS
(01:41):
for knowledge and education ineDiscovery.
Thanks so much for joining metoday.
This week's decision touches ona topic in eDiscovery.
Thanks so much for joining metoday.
This week's decision touches ona topic in eDiscovery that is
rarely discussed but affectsevery production that we make
and how we make them.
It's called manner ofproduction and it's both how we
receive the documents think vialink or secure file transfer
(02:02):
protocol, if you're still usingencrypted hard drives and the
organization of the documentsthat we receive via that format.
Last week I was in my formerhometown of Milwaukee, wisconsin
, speaking at the Law andTechnology Conference there and
one of the things that I raisedto the group.
There is an important pointthat I want to make for our
(02:22):
audience here and that is thatthe case law that we see in
eDiscovery it is not necessarilyjurisdiction specific the way
that other case law is in othersubstantive areas of the law.
Most often those case updatesare jurisdiction specific and it
would have been last week whenI'm speaking to folks in
(02:44):
Wisconsin whether it wasWisconsin state law or law from
the seventh circuit.
But e-discovery case law isformed in the trial courts and
it's very fact specific and wedon't have one jurisdiction
across the country that hasaddressed every single issue in
electronic discovery, and socourts from across the country,
(03:08):
in ruling on decisions,typically cite to cases from
other districts or even statecourts or appellate courts from
across the country.
So when you're conducting yourresearch on e-discovery case law
, be sure to look outside thejurisdiction you're in for in
order to be able to makeanalogous arguments.
Many of the issues ine-discovery have been addressed
(03:30):
by courts.
They just maybe are not thecourt that you're sitting in.
We also don't necessarily havethat many appellate rulings in
e-discovery case law, whichmeans that the cases that you're
citing to a court are otherdistrict court decisions or
other state court decisions orfederal decisions in state court
.
Whatever the case may be, lookfor the case law that has
(03:51):
addressed the issue inelectronic discovery that you
are trying to impart to thecourt.
Focusing purely on discoverydecisions in your jurisdiction
will limit you unnecessarily, sokeep that in mind as we're
moving forward.
All right, let's dive into thisweek's decision.
This week's case comes to usfrom Partners Insight LLC versus
(04:14):
Gill.
This is a decision from October28, 2024 from United States
Magistrate Judge Kyle Dudek.
Judge Dudek has 69 decisions inour eDiscovery Assistant
database.
He is a magistrate judge in theMiddle District of Florida.
As always, we add the issuetags to each of our decisions in
(04:36):
eDiscovery Assistant, and thisweek's issues include native
format, metadata, cost recoveryand manner of production and
failure to produce.
All right, what are the factsbefore us here Now?
This is a really short decisionIt'll just take you a few
minutes to read, but it's animportant one.
With regard to subsection E offederal rules, civil procedure,
(04:56):
rule 34 regarding form andmanner of production, we're
before the court here on amotion to compel that are
brought by the plaintiffs, whoare seeking to compel the
production of documents thathave already been produced in a
different format with differentorganization.
Stephen and Jennifer Gill wereplaintiffs are former employees
(05:16):
of the defendant.
As part of their employment,they signed several agreements
containing confidentiality andnon-compete provisions.
Maintaining confidentiality andnon-compete provisions, the
plaintiffs alleged that theGills violated those agreements
by stealing trade secrets andforming competing businesses to
compete against the plaintiff.
The plaintiffs serveddefendants with requests for
production shortly after thecase was filed.
(05:38):
Now, according to the court,the defendants so again Stephen
and Jennifer Gill resistedproducing any responsive
documents for more than 18months and then finally produced
a link to more than 180,000documents of emails and other
documents in electronic formatwith metadata.
The plaintiffs here sought tocompel the defendants to produce
(06:00):
all responsive non-privilegeddocuments in native format with
metadata and with sufficientspecification and identification
of the documents produced.
So we're talking about form ofproduction with regard to native
and we're talking about mannerof production.
In terms of the organization ofthe documents, the court found
that the defendants had providedthe documents in electronic
(06:22):
form along with metadata.
It did not address what formatthe defendants had provided the
documents in electronic formalong with metadata.
It did not address what formatthe defendants provided
information in or whetherplaintiffs requested native
format in either theirinstructions to the RFPs or in
an agreed upon ESI protocol orsome other way to address form
of production.
Without those specifics it'sdifficult to know whether the
(06:45):
defendants produced documentsreally in violation of what the
plaintiffs asked for initially.
And you'll recall from Rule 34that if a party does not request
documents in a certain form,then the producing party can
provide them in whatever form isreasonable is reasonable, all
(07:07):
right, because there was not anyspecifics about form of
production and the courtessentially decided that having
produced TIFF images withmetadata was sufficient.
The court then turned to theorganization of the documents
provided.
Now I refer to this as manner ofproduction, and if you have
downloaded or read our ebook onESI protocols something that
we're actually updating forredistribution here in a couple
of weeks you'll see a wholesection on manner of production,
(07:30):
and manner of productionconsists of two things.
It consists of one the way inwhich documents are transmitted
to you.
So that could be via a link.
I could provide a link to someservice that would allow you to
download the production.
Share file is a common one.
Other parties use box ordropbox.
You can provide links to a lotof different services.
(07:51):
Another solution is to send viashared file transfer protocol,
typically things like ignitemedia shuttle.
Many services provide sftpprotocols that allow you to
share information largequantities of information
quickly.
So, however it is that youdecide you want to get that
information, it does impact thetiming with which you receive it
(08:14):
.
Right, if I receive a sharefile link, it's going to take me
hours to download a productionthat comes with many, many
gigabytes, and so how younegotiate that manner of
production determines howquickly you're going to get that
information.
Why does that matter?
Well, if you get theinformation on a Monday and you
have a motion that you have tofile on a Friday.
You don't want to waste eighthours having to download
(08:37):
information from that link, sothink about that when you're
negotiating how you're going toreceive the information.
The other issue is theorganization of the data.
So when we talk aboutorganization it's, are you just
going to get one massive folderwith all the information in it,
and how will that information beorganized?
What metadata fields are goingto be provided with it as part
(08:59):
of that form discussion?
So organization and how theinformation is actually provided
to you are the two componentsof manner of production.
Plaintiffs here complained thatthe defendants dumped documents
at their feet quote without anydiscernible organization or
relevance to the specificrequest propounded and that the
(09:20):
plaintiffs could not tell whichdiscovery request the documents
respond to.
That the plaintiffs could nottell which discovery request the
documents respond to.
The defendants argued that theyidentified by bait stamp which
files were responsive to theplaintiff's requests, but they
did not do so with emails, asthey were produced in the usual
course of business.
The court then looked at Rule34B2E, titled Producing the
(09:42):
Documents or ElectronicallyStored Information, for Guidance
on this issue and thatsubsection of the rule has three
additional subsections whichapply to the production of ESI
quote, unless otherwisestipulated or ordered by the
court.
And those three subsections areas follows One, a party must
(10:04):
produce documents as they arekept in the usual course of
business or must organize andlabel them to correspond to the
categories in the request.
Two, if a request does notspecify a form for producing
electronically storedinformation, a party must
produce it in a form or forms inwhich it is ordinarily
(10:25):
maintained or in a reasonablyusable form or forms.
And three, a party need notproduce the same electronically
stored information in more thanone form.
So we've got two actualdifferent concepts here within
these three subsections.
One, with regard to manner ofproduction, it talks about the
organization in subsection oneand it notes that you can
(10:47):
produce documents as they arekept in the usual course of
business, or organize and labelthem to correspond to a request.
So that's manner of productionin subsection one.
Subsections two and three talkabout form and, as I already
mentioned, subsection two saysif you don't specify a form for
production, then a party canprovide it to you in whatever is
(11:08):
reasonable.
Section three goes a stepfurther and says a party does
not have to produce it to you inmore than one form.
So if you don't ask for it outof the gate and you wait for a
party to give you something, aslong as that format is
reasonable and courts vary as towhether non-searchable PDFs,
(11:28):
tiff images, all these differentkinds of productions are
reasonable then you will not beentitled to ask for it in a
second form.
And that's really what itappears like here.
In this particular situation,the defendants produced
information to the plaintiffs inTIFF files, so tagged image
(11:48):
file format files, whereessentially they took the native
document, broke it up into twopieces.
One is the actual text from thedocument itself and two is an
image of the document, so thatwhen you load those files, you
can see both the document as itoriginally appeared, as an image
, but also with a text that canbe loaded so you can review and
(12:09):
search on the text as well.
Is that better or worse thannative?
Well, we can absolutely talkabout that.
Today, you can render TIFFs onthe fly, meaning that if I load
a whole bunch of nativedocuments into a review platform
, I can decide just to make aTIFF image of that document
right then and there, if I wantto.
So there's a lot of debateabout whether or not native
(12:33):
production is better than TIF,and that's not where we're going
to go today.
But I will point out someresources there for you to take
a look at Now.
After looking at the sectionlanguage of the rule, the court
then went on to note thatthere's a split among courts as
to which of those subsectionsapply to ESI, finding that some
(12:56):
courts have held that ESIproductions are governed
exclusively by subsection two,which again requires you to
specify a form for producing ESIor getting whatever is
reasonable, while subsection oneapplies solely to hard copy
documents and again, subsectionone is that a party must produce
documents as they are kept inthe ordinary course of business
or organize and label themaccording to request.
(13:17):
That line of reasoning from thecourt that subsection one would
apply to hard copy documentsand subsection two would apply
to ESI does not make any senseto me and it's not consistent, I
don't think, with the readingof the advisory committee notes
for that rule.
Under that logic, as the courtapplies it here, subsection one,
(13:37):
which provides for theorganization of documents or the
manner in which they areprovided, is completely left out
when talking about ESI andthat's a terrible approach as
the volume of ESI requires moreorganization, not less.
That approach focuses entirelyon form of production, as
covered in section two andsection three, meaning that if a
(13:59):
party produces TIFF files toyou or TIFFs to you with
metadata, that you then havethat information and can be able
to filter and store it in a waythat you would not otherwise be
able to do with hard copyinformation.
I don't believe those sectionswere meant to be read exclusive
of one another.
The court notes that the vastmajority of courts have found
(14:23):
that the production of ESI mustcomply with both sections, one
and two, meaning both form andmanner of production.
Having said, okay, we're notgoing to follow that one
approach, the vast majority ofcourts follow the second
approach.
Then what does the court do?
The court then turned to theanalysis of that law, to the
facts of this case, and foundthat it didn't actually have to
(14:44):
decide the approach, whichapproach was correct, because it
felt that defendants satisfiedboth sections with the
production they had already madeto plaintiffs.
The court noted that thedefendants produced responsive
emails as TIFF images with loadfiles which retained the
relevant metadata and quoteessential functionality of the
native file format.
(15:04):
According to the court, that issufficient.
Again, what the court does notsay here is what format
plaintiffs requested the data in.
Just that the defendant'sproduction is reasonable.
Now, looking at subsection two,the organization or manner in
which the documents are provided, the court found that the
defendants were entitled toproduce documents as they are
(15:27):
maintained in the usual courseof business.
So technically, although thecourt said they don't need to
decide which approach they'retaking, they actually did the
analysis under both sections,one and two.
So really they adopted theapproach that the vast majority
of courts do.
According to the court, when aparty chooses to produce
documents as they are kept inthe usual course of business
(15:48):
quote the mode of productionshould preserve the functional
utility of the electronicinformation produced.
That requires two things One,preserving the format of the ESI
and two, providing sufficientinformation about the context in
which it is kept or used.
Now, to meet that firstrequirement preserving the
format of the ESI the producingparty must generally produce ESI
(16:12):
in the format in which they arekept on the user's hard drive
or other storage device.
Now, if that's the case, thatwould be native format.
Defendants here produce TIFFfiles accompanied by load files
which, according to the courtquote, retain the relevant
metadata and essentialfunctionality of the native file
format.
Close quote.
Those two statements arecompletely opposite.
(16:36):
Citing to the TeledyneInstruments case, here, the
court then found that, quotegenerally, a file that is
converted to another formatsolely for production, or for
which the application metadatahas been scrubbed or altered, is
not produced as kept in theordinary course of business.
Close quote.
So that's two parts a file thathas been converted to another
(16:59):
format solely for production orfor which the metadata has been
altered or scrubbed.
Now, according to Teledyne,cited again by the court here,
files that are maintained innative format should be produced
in native format, including themetadata, but ostensibly
completely disregarding thatholding.
(17:19):
Judge Dudek then notes thatquote courts have accepted TIF
files like those here, citingcases from 2019 and 2013.
In doing so, the plaintiff thecourt here states that
plaintiffs have not claimed, letalone shown, that the emails
are unsearchable, which was nota requirement at all of Teledyne
(17:41):
or of the federal rule thatwe're referencing here, or that
metadata was missing Also asecondary portion of that
Teledyne holding, because therewere two separate pieces.
Right, if you convert the filethat's not native, that's not
what should be provided In doingso by saying that the court or
(18:03):
that the plaintiffs failed toshow that they missed these
things.
The first requirement wassatisfied, according to the
court.
The court then turned to thesecond requirement and, again
citing to Teledyne, found that aproducing party provides enough
information about the contextin which the emails are kept and
used, if it provides quote thedate the email was transmitted,
(18:25):
perhaps along with the partiesto the email sender and
recipients, and the subject line.
Oh, if you can't see me, it'sbecause I'm gritting my teeth
massively Applying that analysishere, the court found that
plaintiffs had not provided anyevidence that the information
(18:46):
was not included in theproduction and that, quote at
bottom, plaintiffs have notshown that defendant's response
is deficient under Rule 34,which allows the production of
ESI as quote kept in the usualcourse of business, close quote.
Production of ESI as quote keptin the usual course of business
, close quote.
Now the plaintiffs argued thata party may only produce
documents as they are usuallykept when their natural
organization makes findingcritical documents reasonably
possible.
It's a good argument, but it'snot supported by the language of
(19:08):
the rule.
So how did the court addressthat?
Well, the court agreed that thatit may direct a party to
organize or label documents ifit's impossible to find critical
documents, but that it wasunable to do that on the record
before it.
It noted that the plaintiffsdid not argue that the emails
were unsearchable or that theycannot be organized by date or
sender, which those are reallytwo different things.
(19:31):
It kind of demonstrates herethat I'm not sure the court had
the level of sophistication andknowledge of the information
before it or the technology thatcan be used here, because when
the plaintiffs argued that theycan't find critical documents,
the court is essentially sayingwhy I don't have enough
information before me to be ableto determine why you can't do
(19:52):
that.
So the plaintiffs needed tomake a better case for
themselves here.
The court also noted that theobligations of Rule 34B2E1 are
disjunctive.
There's no obligation underRule 34 that a party who elects
to produce documents as they areordinarily kept in the course
of business to also organizethem.
(20:13):
Now that's a key piece righthere, I think, for the
production of ESI, because whatdoes ordinary course of business
mean?
When we dealt with paper copies, it meant that each custodian
had a file in their file drawer,had some form of organization
of information.
If we're not providing that inthat way now by custodian or by
(20:37):
some other organization.
We're not really providing dataas it's kept in the ordinary
course of business.
Email in an organizationgenerally is all kept in one
place.
It's on the cloud or the server, whatever that email service is
, that manages thatorganization's email
infrastructure, and so that'sall in one place.
(20:57):
If you're pulling down recordsfor multiple custodians
regarding multiple topics, someof which may not be specifically
custodian-based, then how doyou organize all of that
information?
You need to start thinkingabout that when you're dealing
with productions.
Now that we're dealing withcollaboration tools text
messages how do you want thatinformation organized?
(21:18):
How do you want that collectionto be presented to you?
If you know that the textmessages are likely to be the
most important part of the datasource that you get in responses
to requests for production?
Have those text messagesorganized separately?
Negotiate what you can do.
All right with this ruling thatthe court found.
(21:39):
The court denied plaintiff'smotion to compel and also denied
the motion for defendant's costrecovery, finding that quote
reasonable.
People could differ on themerits of the motion and whether
further organization was neededgiven the sheer volume of
production.
Now, here we were talking abouta little bit more than 180,000
documents.
That's a lot of documents, noquestion, but it's a drop in the
(22:00):
bucket compared to what we seein general civil litigation
these days.
And when you multiply thattimes four, five, six, the
ability to organize thatinformation sufficiently becomes
increasingly important from acost perspective.
So we got to keep an eye onthis issue.
I still feel like there needsto be some kind of amendment to
(22:22):
Rule 34 to better provide forhow ESI could be provided on
production.
All right, what are ourtakeaways here?
Well, we've talked a bit abouthow Rule 34 addresses both
format and manner of productionin subsection B2E, and we talked
about that language already.
Now I find that counselregularly gloss over manner of
production, and that's a mistakein my opinion.
(22:45):
How documents are organized andhow you receive them can
dramatically impact how long ittakes you to find something in
that production.
Think carefully about whatyou're asking for and what you
need to be able to find and askfor documents that way.
Negotiate it at the outset,don't just send your discovery
requests off.
Make sure that your discoveryrequests include both
(23:07):
instructions or in format, andthat format is going to need to
address different metadatafields depending on the sources
of ESI.
We have different formats,different metadata fields in
Slack, different metadata fieldsdepending on the sources of ESI
.
We have different formats,different metadata fields in
Slack, different metadata fieldsin Teams for WhatsApp or Signal
for text messages.
They all have differentmetadata fields and you want to
know what those are.
A key to format for textmessages is making sure that
(23:30):
when text messages are exported,that the contact names for each
of the phone numbers are in thephone, that the text messages
are exported, that the contactnames for each of the phone
numbers are in the phone, thatthe text messages are collected
from.
Otherwise, you get textmessages from a phone number and
you have to match all of thosemessages up to a specific phone
number, to a specific custodian.
It makes reviewing informationa lot more difficult.
So think carefully about yourform and manner of production
(23:54):
for each source of ESI that youhave in a case and how quickly
you're going to need to be ableto access them.
If you're not going to get yourresponses for information until
the week that you're trying totake a deposition, you're going
to have a really hard timegetting through that collection
and making sure you have all thenecessary documents to be able
to properly take that depositionor defend it, as the case may
(24:16):
be.
Now this next takeaway may seema little bit elementary for
season discovery professionals,but if you want a specific form
of production, you have to askfor it.
Here the plaintiff soughtnative format for the files, but
there's nothing in the decisionfrom the court as to whether
they asked for it in eithertheir request for production or
(24:37):
in another way.
Like in an ESI protocol, if youdon't ask for it, rule 34 says
the producing party can provideit in any reasonable format.
Here defendants did what isstandard.
They provided TIFFs withmetadata and the court said that
works, that works.
Now what's interesting to me inthis decision is how Judge
(24:57):
Dudek cites the Teledynedecision that says native
documents should be producednatively and that converting
native format to TIFFs is notnative production, but he then
ignores it essentially byfinding that because defendants
produce metadata with custodianand date ranges that would allow
plaintiffs to do the samesearches, it doesn't work like
that.
Native data is always going tobe superior and the days of not
(25:20):
being able to ensure that theother side can't alter them are
really over.
We argued about that for a fulldecade and it just isn't how
the data is structured.
Craig Ball wrote an excellentpiece years ago on his Balling
your Court blog about the valueof native data versus TIFFs.
There just isn't a comparisonand we'll drop a link to Craig's
(25:41):
post if that's okay with him.
Both in our show notes and inthe comments here as well,
discovery has always beencontemplated that both sides
have equal access to responsiveinformation, and in this case
ESI.
And equal access means that bothparties get the same data in
the same format.
Now take this back to manner ofproduction.
(26:02):
So we talked about format.
When you're talking aboutmanner of production, it's
critical that you consider thiswhen you're requesting documents
or negotiating an ESI protocol.
The sheer volume of data thatwe have now with ESI means that
the cost of handling that dataratchets up as the volume and
complexity of that data goes up.
(26:22):
They really just go on a graphright together.
Controlling costs for discoveryhas to begin at the outset of
the matter by negotiating boththe format and the organization
of the data.
Are you entitled to it?
Not really under the rules, butif you can make a good case for
why you should get it a certainway, do it, and you have to ask
(26:44):
before the production is made.
No court will require a partyto reproduce information, except
in very limited situations.
If it's a dire circumstance foryour client in terms of getting
a specific organization for thecourt and you can make a good
factual basis for it, you can goto the court in advance of
receiving the documents to havethe court order production in a
(27:06):
certain way, hear from the otherside about what the additional
burden is to provide productionin that way and then come to a
compromise or go to the courtand have them order it.
But you're going to have toprovide that factual basis to be
able to explain why the courtshould provide that.
The plaintiffs weren't able todo that here and that's why they
ultimately lost.
(27:28):
Now one thing to be aware ofCalifornia passed a statute a
couple of years ago that nowrequires all productions to be
organized by request.
That's an additional burden andbecause multiple documents can
be responsive to multiplerequests, overlapping requests
generally.
It's not an easy thing to doand it takes more time.
In huge productions it can addhundreds of hours and therefore
(27:51):
cost.
So be aware of that, negotiatewith the other side, but you'll
have to meet that obligation.
Now there's no inkling that thefederal rules of civil
procedure are moving in thatdirection.
But if the plaintiffs here hadmade a factual basis for why
they needed what they asked for,the court really did seem
primed to entertain it.
It just did not have enough ofa record to do so.
So make that factual basis.
(28:12):
Make the factual basis for whatit is that you're asking the
court to do.
It's one of our themes here onCase of the Week and it's a
really important one.
Discovery motions are won andlost based on the facts and the
record before the court.
It's the latter the loss, thelack of facts presented by a
(28:33):
party, that usually trips up oneparty and causes them to lose.
Provide the appropriatedetailed factual analysis.
Don't just argue the rules.
If you need help, find someonewho can sufficiently make the
argument for you, put in adeclaration from an expert, from
any discovery professional, allright, that's our case of the
argument for you.
Put in a declaration from anexpert, from an e-discovery
professional, all right, that'sour case of the week for this
(28:53):
week.
Be sure to tune in next week,whether you're watching us via
our blog, youtube, ordownloading it as a podcast on
your favorite platform.
Thanks so much for taking sometime to tune in.
Please do let me know if youhave suggestions for topics,
issues or specific cases to becovered on the case of the week
and I look forward to hearingfrom you.
Thanks, talk to you soon.
Thanks for joining me on thecase of the week podcast Tune in
(29:17):
next episode as I discuss a newdecision in e-discovery case
law and identify the issues youneed to be paying attention to
and how they can help you dobetter discovery for your
clients and leverage the powerof ESI.
Be sure to subscribe and leavea review to help others discover
the show and be kept in theknow on all things electronic
discovery.
I'm Kelly Twigger.
See you next time.
Welcome to the Case of the Week podcast, where
each week, we break down arecent decision in electronic
discovery case law and talkabout the practical impact for
you and your clients and keepyou up to date on your
obligations with electronicallystored information as evidence.
If you're a litigator, legalprofessional or you love the
power of ESI as much as I do,this is the place to be.
(00:35):
I'm Kelly Twigger, the CEO andfounder of eDiscovery Assistant
and the principal at ESIAttorneys, with more than 25
years of experience navigatingthe evolving landscape of
litigation and e-discovery.
I'm a practicing attorney,author, speaker, entrepreneur
and now podcaster who works as adiscovery strategist and expert
for clients at ESI Attorneysand to provide that knowledge to
(00:58):
all legal professionals throughour e-discovery assistant
platform.
In each episode, we'll tackle anew decision in eDiscovery case
law and how it shapes both yourlitigation strategy and
planning for risk mitigation.
If you're ready for blunt,actionable insights that keep
you ahead of the curve, andmaybe a few laughs along the way
, this is your go-to podcast.
(01:19):
Subscribe or follow now tostart embracing the power of ESI
as evidence.
Hi and welcome to this week'sepisode of the Case of the Week
series brought to you byeDiscovery Assistant, your GPS
(01:41):
for knowledge and education ineDiscovery.
Thanks so much for joining metoday.
This week's decision touches ona topic in eDiscovery.
Thanks so much for joining metoday.
This week's decision touches ona topic in eDiscovery that is
rarely discussed but affectsevery production that we make
and how we make them.
It's called manner ofproduction and it's both how we
receive the documents think vialink or secure file transfer
(02:02):
protocol, if you're still usingencrypted hard drives and the
organization of the documentsthat we receive via that format.
Last week I was in my formerhometown of Milwaukee, wisconsin
, speaking at the Law andTechnology Conference there and
one of the things that I raisedto the group.
There is an important pointthat I want to make for our
(02:22):
audience here and that is thatthe case law that we see in
eDiscovery it is not necessarilyjurisdiction specific the way
that other case law is in othersubstantive areas of the law.
Most often those case updatesare jurisdiction specific and it
would have been last week whenI'm speaking to folks in
(02:44):
Wisconsin whether it wasWisconsin state law or law from
the seventh circuit.
But e-discovery case law isformed in the trial courts and
it's very fact specific and wedon't have one jurisdiction
across the country that hasaddressed every single issue in
electronic discovery, and socourts from across the country,
(03:08):
in ruling on decisions,typically cite to cases from
other districts or even statecourts or appellate courts from
across the country.
So when you're conducting yourresearch on e-discovery case law
, be sure to look outside thejurisdiction you're in for in
order to be able to makeanalogous arguments.
Many of the issues ine-discovery have been addressed
(03:30):
by courts.
They just maybe are not thecourt that you're sitting in.
We also don't necessarily havethat many appellate rulings in
e-discovery case law, whichmeans that the cases that you're
citing to a court are otherdistrict court decisions or
other state court decisions orfederal decisions in state court
.
Whatever the case may be, lookfor the case law that has
(03:51):
addressed the issue inelectronic discovery that you
are trying to impart to thecourt.
Focusing purely on discoverydecisions in your jurisdiction
will limit you unnecessarily, sokeep that in mind as we're
moving forward.
All right, let's dive into thisweek's decision.
This week's case comes to usfrom Partners Insight LLC versus
(04:14):
Gill.
This is a decision from October28, 2024 from United States
Magistrate Judge Kyle Dudek.
Judge Dudek has 69 decisions inour eDiscovery Assistant
database.
He is a magistrate judge in theMiddle District of Florida.
As always, we add the issuetags to each of our decisions in
(04:36):
eDiscovery Assistant, and thisweek's issues include native
format, metadata, cost recoveryand manner of production and
failure to produce.
All right, what are the factsbefore us here Now?
This is a really short decisionIt'll just take you a few
minutes to read, but it's animportant one.
With regard to subsection E offederal rules, civil procedure,
(04:56):
rule 34 regarding form andmanner of production, we're
before the court here on amotion to compel that are
brought by the plaintiffs, whoare seeking to compel the
production of documents thathave already been produced in a
different format with differentorganization.
Stephen and Jennifer Gill wereplaintiffs are former employees
(05:16):
of the defendant.
As part of their employment,they signed several agreements
containing confidentiality andnon-compete provisions.
Maintaining confidentiality andnon-compete provisions, the
plaintiffs alleged that theGills violated those agreements
by stealing trade secrets andforming competing businesses to
compete against the plaintiff.
The plaintiffs serveddefendants with requests for
production shortly after thecase was filed.
(05:38):
Now, according to the court,the defendants so again Stephen
and Jennifer Gill resistedproducing any responsive
documents for more than 18months and then finally produced
a link to more than 180,000documents of emails and other
documents in electronic formatwith metadata.
The plaintiffs here sought tocompel the defendants to produce
(06:00):
all responsive non-privilegeddocuments in native format with
metadata and with sufficientspecification and identification
of the documents produced.
So we're talking about form ofproduction with regard to native
and we're talking about mannerof production.
In terms of the organization ofthe documents, the court found
that the defendants had providedthe documents in electronic
(06:22):
form along with metadata.
It did not address what formatthe defendants had provided the
documents in electronic formalong with metadata.
It did not address what formatthe defendants provided
information in or whetherplaintiffs requested native
format in either theirinstructions to the RFPs or in
an agreed upon ESI protocol orsome other way to address form
of production.
Without those specifics it'sdifficult to know whether the
(06:45):
defendants produced documentsreally in violation of what the
plaintiffs asked for initially.
And you'll recall from Rule 34that if a party does not request
documents in a certain form,then the producing party can
provide them in whatever form isreasonable is reasonable, all
(07:07):
right, because there was not anyspecifics about form of
production and the courtessentially decided that having
produced TIFF images withmetadata was sufficient.
The court then turned to theorganization of the documents
provided.
Now I refer to this as manner ofproduction, and if you have
downloaded or read our ebook onESI protocols something that
we're actually updating forredistribution here in a couple
of weeks you'll see a wholesection on manner of production,
(07:30):
and manner of productionconsists of two things.
It consists of one the way inwhich documents are transmitted
to you.
So that could be via a link.
I could provide a link to someservice that would allow you to
download the production.
Share file is a common one.
Other parties use box ordropbox.
You can provide links to a lotof different services.
(07:51):
Another solution is to send viashared file transfer protocol,
typically things like ignitemedia shuttle.
Many services provide sftpprotocols that allow you to
share information largequantities of information
quickly.
So, however it is that youdecide you want to get that
information, it does impact thetiming with which you receive it
(08:14):
.
Right, if I receive a sharefile link, it's going to take me
hours to download a productionthat comes with many, many
gigabytes, and so how younegotiate that manner of
production determines howquickly you're going to get that
information.
Why does that matter?
Well, if you get theinformation on a Monday and you
have a motion that you have tofile on a Friday.
You don't want to waste eighthours having to download
(08:37):
information from that link, sothink about that when you're
negotiating how you're going toreceive the information.
The other issue is theorganization of the data.
So when we talk aboutorganization it's, are you just
going to get one massive folderwith all the information in it,
and how will that information beorganized?
What metadata fields are goingto be provided with it as part
(08:59):
of that form discussion?
So organization and how theinformation is actually provided
to you are the two componentsof manner of production.
Plaintiffs here complained thatthe defendants dumped documents
at their feet quote without anydiscernible organization or
relevance to the specificrequest propounded and that the
(09:20):
plaintiffs could not tell whichdiscovery request the documents
respond to.
That the plaintiffs could nottell which discovery request the
documents respond to.
The defendants argued that theyidentified by bait stamp which
files were responsive to theplaintiff's requests, but they
did not do so with emails, asthey were produced in the usual
course of business.
The court then looked at Rule34B2E, titled Producing the
(09:42):
Documents or ElectronicallyStored Information, for Guidance
on this issue and thatsubsection of the rule has three
additional subsections whichapply to the production of ESI
quote, unless otherwisestipulated or ordered by the
court.
And those three subsections areas follows One, a party must
(10:04):
produce documents as they arekept in the usual course of
business or must organize andlabel them to correspond to the
categories in the request.
Two, if a request does notspecify a form for producing
electronically storedinformation, a party must
produce it in a form or forms inwhich it is ordinarily
(10:25):
maintained or in a reasonablyusable form or forms.
And three, a party need notproduce the same electronically
stored information in more thanone form.
So we've got two actualdifferent concepts here within
these three subsections.
One, with regard to manner ofproduction, it talks about the
organization in subsection oneand it notes that you can
(10:47):
produce documents as they arekept in the usual course of
business, or organize and labelthem to correspond to a request.
So that's manner of productionin subsection one.
Subsections two and three talkabout form and, as I already
mentioned, subsection two saysif you don't specify a form for
production, then a party canprovide it to you in whatever is
(11:08):
reasonable.
Section three goes a stepfurther and says a party does
not have to produce it to you inmore than one form.
So if you don't ask for it outof the gate and you wait for a
party to give you something, aslong as that format is
reasonable and courts vary as towhether non-searchable PDFs,
(11:28):
tiff images, all these differentkinds of productions are
reasonable then you will not beentitled to ask for it in a
second form.
And that's really what itappears like here.
In this particular situation,the defendants produced
information to the plaintiffs inTIFF files, so tagged image
(11:48):
file format files, whereessentially they took the native
document, broke it up into twopieces.
One is the actual text from thedocument itself and two is an
image of the document, so thatwhen you load those files, you
can see both the document as itoriginally appeared, as an image
, but also with a text that canbe loaded so you can review and
(12:09):
search on the text as well.
Is that better or worse thannative?
Well, we can absolutely talkabout that.
Today, you can render TIFFs onthe fly, meaning that if I load
a whole bunch of nativedocuments into a review platform
, I can decide just to make aTIFF image of that document
right then and there, if I wantto.
So there's a lot of debateabout whether or not native
(12:33):
production is better than TIF,and that's not where we're going
to go today.
But I will point out someresources there for you to take
a look at Now.
After looking at the sectionlanguage of the rule, the court
then went on to note thatthere's a split among courts as
to which of those subsectionsapply to ESI, finding that some
(12:56):
courts have held that ESIproductions are governed
exclusively by subsection two,which again requires you to
specify a form for producing ESIor getting whatever is
reasonable, while subsection oneapplies solely to hard copy
documents and again, subsectionone is that a party must produce
documents as they are kept inthe ordinary course of business
or organize and label themaccording to request.
(13:17):
That line of reasoning from thecourt that subsection one would
apply to hard copy documentsand subsection two would apply
to ESI does not make any senseto me and it's not consistent, I
don't think, with the readingof the advisory committee notes
for that rule.
Under that logic, as the courtapplies it here, subsection one,
(13:37):
which provides for theorganization of documents or the
manner in which they areprovided, is completely left out
when talking about ESI andthat's a terrible approach as
the volume of ESI requires moreorganization, not less.
That approach focuses entirelyon form of production, as
covered in section two andsection three, meaning that if a
(13:59):
party produces TIFF files toyou or TIFFs to you with
metadata, that you then havethat information and can be able
to filter and store it in a waythat you would not otherwise be
able to do with hard copyinformation.
I don't believe those sectionswere meant to be read exclusive
of one another.
The court notes that the vastmajority of courts have found
(14:23):
that the production of ESI mustcomply with both sections, one
and two, meaning both form andmanner of production.
Having said, okay, we're notgoing to follow that one
approach, the vast majority ofcourts follow the second
approach.
Then what does the court do?
The court then turned to theanalysis of that law, to the
facts of this case, and foundthat it didn't actually have to
(14:44):
decide the approach, whichapproach was correct, because it
felt that defendants satisfiedboth sections with the
production they had already madeto plaintiffs.
The court noted that thedefendants produced responsive
emails as TIFF images with loadfiles which retained the
relevant metadata and quoteessential functionality of the
native file format.
(15:04):
According to the court, that issufficient.
Again, what the court does notsay here is what format
plaintiffs requested the data in.
Just that the defendant'sproduction is reasonable.
Now, looking at subsection two,the organization or manner in
which the documents are provided, the court found that the
defendants were entitled toproduce documents as they are
(15:27):
maintained in the usual courseof business.
So technically, although thecourt said they don't need to
decide which approach they'retaking, they actually did the
analysis under both sections,one and two.
So really they adopted theapproach that the vast majority
of courts do.
According to the court, when aparty chooses to produce
documents as they are kept inthe usual course of business
(15:48):
quote the mode of productionshould preserve the functional
utility of the electronicinformation produced.
That requires two things One,preserving the format of the ESI
and two, providing sufficientinformation about the context in
which it is kept or used.
Now, to meet that firstrequirement preserving the
format of the ESI the producingparty must generally produce ESI
(16:12):
in the format in which they arekept on the user's hard drive
or other storage device.
Now, if that's the case, thatwould be native format.
Defendants here produce TIFFfiles accompanied by load files
which, according to the courtquote, retain the relevant
metadata and essentialfunctionality of the native file
format.
Close quote.
Those two statements arecompletely opposite.
(16:36):
Citing to the TeledyneInstruments case, here, the
court then found that, quotegenerally, a file that is
converted to another formatsolely for production, or for
which the application metadatahas been scrubbed or altered, is
not produced as kept in theordinary course of business.
Close quote.
So that's two parts a file thathas been converted to another
(16:59):
format solely for production orfor which the metadata has been
altered or scrubbed.
Now, according to Teledyne,cited again by the court here,
files that are maintained innative format should be produced
in native format, including themetadata, but ostensibly
completely disregarding thatholding.
(17:19):
Judge Dudek then notes thatquote courts have accepted TIF
files like those here, citingcases from 2019 and 2013.
In doing so, the plaintiff thecourt here states that
plaintiffs have not claimed, letalone shown, that the emails
are unsearchable, which was nota requirement at all of Teledyne
(17:41):
or of the federal rule thatwe're referencing here, or that
metadata was missing Also asecondary portion of that
Teledyne holding, because therewere two separate pieces.
Right, if you convert the filethat's not native, that's not
what should be provided In doingso by saying that the court or
(18:03):
that the plaintiffs failed toshow that they missed these
things.
The first requirement wassatisfied, according to the
court.
The court then turned to thesecond requirement and, again
citing to Teledyne, found that aproducing party provides enough
information about the contextin which the emails are kept and
used, if it provides quote thedate the email was transmitted,
(18:25):
perhaps along with the partiesto the email sender and
recipients, and the subject line.
Oh, if you can't see me, it'sbecause I'm gritting my teeth
massively Applying that analysishere, the court found that
plaintiffs had not provided anyevidence that the information
(18:46):
was not included in theproduction and that, quote at
bottom, plaintiffs have notshown that defendant's response
is deficient under Rule 34,which allows the production of
ESI as quote kept in the usualcourse of business, close quote.
Production of ESI as quote keptin the usual course of business
, close quote.
Now the plaintiffs argued thata party may only produce
documents as they are usuallykept when their natural
organization makes findingcritical documents reasonably
possible.
It's a good argument, but it'snot supported by the language of
(19:08):
the rule.
So how did the court addressthat?
Well, the court agreed that thatit may direct a party to
organize or label documents ifit's impossible to find critical
documents, but that it wasunable to do that on the record
before it.
It noted that the plaintiffsdid not argue that the emails
were unsearchable or that theycannot be organized by date or
sender, which those are reallytwo different things.
(19:31):
It kind of demonstrates herethat I'm not sure the court had
the level of sophistication andknowledge of the information
before it or the technology thatcan be used here, because when
the plaintiffs argued that theycan't find critical documents,
the court is essentially sayingwhy I don't have enough
information before me to be ableto determine why you can't do
(19:52):
that.
So the plaintiffs needed tomake a better case for
themselves here.
The court also noted that theobligations of Rule 34B2E1 are
disjunctive.
There's no obligation underRule 34 that a party who elects
to produce documents as they areordinarily kept in the course
of business to also organizethem.
(20:13):
Now that's a key piece righthere, I think, for the
production of ESI, because whatdoes ordinary course of business
mean?
When we dealt with paper copies, it meant that each custodian
had a file in their file drawer,had some form of organization
of information.
If we're not providing that inthat way now by custodian or by
(20:37):
some other organization.
We're not really providing dataas it's kept in the ordinary
course of business.
Email in an organizationgenerally is all kept in one
place.
It's on the cloud or the server, whatever that email service is
, that manages thatorganization's email
infrastructure, and so that'sall in one place.
(20:57):
If you're pulling down recordsfor multiple custodians
regarding multiple topics, someof which may not be specifically
custodian-based, then how doyou organize all of that
information?
You need to start thinkingabout that when you're dealing
with productions.
Now that we're dealing withcollaboration tools text
messages how do you want thatinformation organized?
(21:18):
How do you want that collectionto be presented to you?
If you know that the textmessages are likely to be the
most important part of the datasource that you get in responses
to requests for production?
Have those text messagesorganized separately?
Negotiate what you can do.
All right with this ruling thatthe court found.
(21:39):
The court denied plaintiff'smotion to compel and also denied
the motion for defendant's costrecovery, finding that quote
reasonable.
People could differ on themerits of the motion and whether
further organization was neededgiven the sheer volume of
production.
Now, here we were talking abouta little bit more than 180,000
documents.
That's a lot of documents, noquestion, but it's a drop in the
(22:00):
bucket compared to what we seein general civil litigation
these days.
And when you multiply thattimes four, five, six, the
ability to organize thatinformation sufficiently becomes
increasingly important from acost perspective.
So we got to keep an eye onthis issue.
I still feel like there needsto be some kind of amendment to
(22:22):
Rule 34 to better provide forhow ESI could be provided on
production.
All right, what are ourtakeaways here?
Well, we've talked a bit abouthow Rule 34 addresses both
format and manner of productionin subsection B2E, and we talked
about that language already.
Now I find that counselregularly gloss over manner of
production, and that's a mistakein my opinion.
(22:45):
How documents are organized andhow you receive them can
dramatically impact how long ittakes you to find something in
that production.
Think carefully about whatyou're asking for and what you
need to be able to find and askfor documents that way.
Negotiate it at the outset,don't just send your discovery
requests off.
Make sure that your discoveryrequests include both
(23:07):
instructions or in format, andthat format is going to need to
address different metadatafields depending on the sources
of ESI.
We have different formats,different metadata fields in
Slack, different metadata fieldsdepending on the sources of ESI
.
We have different formats,different metadata fields in
Slack, different metadata fieldsin Teams for WhatsApp or Signal
for text messages.
They all have differentmetadata fields and you want to
know what those are.
A key to format for textmessages is making sure that
(23:30):
when text messages are exported,that the contact names for each
of the phone numbers are in thephone, that the text messages
are exported, that the contactnames for each of the phone
numbers are in the phone, thatthe text messages are collected
from.
Otherwise, you get textmessages from a phone number and
you have to match all of thosemessages up to a specific phone
number, to a specific custodian.
It makes reviewing informationa lot more difficult.
So think carefully about yourform and manner of production
(23:54):
for each source of ESI that youhave in a case and how quickly
you're going to need to be ableto access them.
If you're not going to get yourresponses for information until
the week that you're trying totake a deposition, you're going
to have a really hard timegetting through that collection
and making sure you have all thenecessary documents to be able
to properly take that depositionor defend it, as the case may
(24:16):
be.
Now this next takeaway may seema little bit elementary for
season discovery professionals,but if you want a specific form
of production, you have to askfor it.
Here the plaintiff soughtnative format for the files, but
there's nothing in the decisionfrom the court as to whether
they asked for it in eithertheir request for production or
(24:37):
in another way.
Like in an ESI protocol, if youdon't ask for it, rule 34 says
the producing party can provideit in any reasonable format.
Here defendants did what isstandard.
They provided TIFFs withmetadata and the court said that
works, that works.
Now what's interesting to me inthis decision is how Judge
(24:57):
Dudek cites the Teledynedecision that says native
documents should be producednatively and that converting
native format to TIFFs is notnative production, but he then
ignores it essentially byfinding that because defendants
produce metadata with custodianand date ranges that would allow
plaintiffs to do the samesearches, it doesn't work like
that.
Native data is always going tobe superior and the days of not
(25:20):
being able to ensure that theother side can't alter them are
really over.
We argued about that for a fulldecade and it just isn't how
the data is structured.
Craig Ball wrote an excellentpiece years ago on his Balling
your Court blog about the valueof native data versus TIFFs.
There just isn't a comparisonand we'll drop a link to Craig's
(25:41):
post if that's okay with him.
Both in our show notes and inthe comments here as well,
discovery has always beencontemplated that both sides
have equal access to responsiveinformation, and in this case
ESI.
And equal access means that bothparties get the same data in
the same format.
Now take this back to manner ofproduction.
(26:02):
So we talked about format.
When you're talking aboutmanner of production, it's
critical that you consider thiswhen you're requesting documents
or negotiating an ESI protocol.
The sheer volume of data thatwe have now with ESI means that
the cost of handling that dataratchets up as the volume and
complexity of that data goes up.
(26:22):
They really just go on a graphright together.
Controlling costs for discoveryhas to begin at the outset of
the matter by negotiating boththe format and the organization
of the data.
Are you entitled to it?
Not really under the rules, butif you can make a good case for
why you should get it a certainway, do it, and you have to ask
(26:44):
before the production is made.
No court will require a partyto reproduce information, except
in very limited situations.
If it's a dire circumstance foryour client in terms of getting
a specific organization for thecourt and you can make a good
factual basis for it, you can goto the court in advance of
receiving the documents to havethe court order production in a
(27:06):
certain way, hear from the otherside about what the additional
burden is to provide productionin that way and then come to a
compromise or go to the courtand have them order it.
But you're going to have toprovide that factual basis to be
able to explain why the courtshould provide that.
The plaintiffs weren't able todo that here and that's why they
ultimately lost.
(27:28):
Now one thing to be aware ofCalifornia passed a statute a
couple of years ago that nowrequires all productions to be
organized by request.
That's an additional burden andbecause multiple documents can
be responsive to multiplerequests, overlapping requests
generally.
It's not an easy thing to doand it takes more time.
In huge productions it can addhundreds of hours and therefore
(27:51):
cost.
So be aware of that, negotiatewith the other side, but you'll
have to meet that obligation.
Now there's no inkling that thefederal rules of civil
procedure are moving in thatdirection.
But if the plaintiffs here hadmade a factual basis for why
they needed what they asked for,the court really did seem
primed to entertain it.
It just did not have enough ofa record to do so.
So make that factual basis.
(28:12):
Make the factual basis for whatit is that you're asking the
court to do.
It's one of our themes here onCase of the Week and it's a
really important one.
Discovery motions are won andlost based on the facts and the
record before the court.
It's the latter the loss, thelack of facts presented by a
(28:33):
party, that usually trips up oneparty and causes them to lose.
Provide the appropriatedetailed factual analysis.
Don't just argue the rules.
If you need help, find someonewho can sufficiently make the
argument for you, put in adeclaration from an expert, from
any discovery professional, allright, that's our case of the
argument for you.
Put in a declaration from anexpert, from an e-discovery
professional, all right, that'sour case of the week for this
(28:53):
week.
Be sure to tune in next week,whether you're watching us via
our blog, youtube, ordownloading it as a podcast on
your favorite platform.
Thanks so much for taking sometime to tune in.
Please do let me know if youhave suggestions for topics,
issues or specific cases to becovered on the case of the week
and I look forward to hearingfrom you.
Thanks, talk to you soon.
Thanks for joining me on thecase of the week podcast Tune in
(29:17):
next episode as I discuss a newdecision in e-discovery case
law and identify the issues youneed to be paying attention to
and how they can help you dobetter discovery for your
clients and leverage the powerof ESI.
Be sure to subscribe and leavea review to help others discover
the show and be kept in theknow on all things electronic
discovery.
I'm Kelly Twigger.
See you next time.
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.