The Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts was in the news recently for Red Wolf Energy Trading, LLC v. BIA Capital Mgmt., LLC, et al. Judge Mark L. Wolf did not mince words when discussing the defendants’ “extreme misconduct” in relation to eDiscovery, noting that civil discovery was not a “game of hide and seek.”
What happened?
Two companies were fighting over whether the defendants, BIA Capital Management et al., had developed a competing business by utilizing Plaintiff Red Wolf’s trade secrets. Red Wolf requested information from several individuals and entities during discovery, but stated that the defendant hadn’t produced certain communications. The court granted their motion to compel certain Slack communications, though the defendants maintained that all relevant documents had already been produced. The plaintiff, however, noted that a simple review of the evidentiary record and depositions made clear that there were more Slack communications to be revealed. No, BIA Capital Management et al. insisted. We’ve reviewed all of our Slack communications, and we have nothing else to produce.
Oh, really?
It turned out they did have more to produce, and that that instead of hiring a reputable eDiscovery vendor, the defendants had hired… a computer programmer from Kazakhstan who had never dealt with eDiscovery involving Slack. He was also being compensated in the form of equity in one of the defendants’ entities “rather than money.”