Law and technology

The Rules Committee of the High Court has released its final draft of new rules on civil discovery. This is the final stage of a long-running process to update the often troublesome rules relating to discovery, in particular electronic discovery. The latest rules are available here (pdf).

Background

For those who are lucky enough not to have been involved in civil litigation, discovery is a legal process that requires each side in the case to “discover” all relevant documents to the other side – the legal equivalent of laying your cards on the table. That doesn’t just mean documents that support your case – parties are also obliged to produce damaging documents. There are only limited grounds for refusing to disclose documents, such as legal privilege, and even then certain steps must be followed.

Unfortunately, discovery has become often a very difficult and time-consuming (and therefore expensive) part of modern commercial litigation. The general rules of discovery were laid down in the nineteenth century, when most documents could only be produced by hand or at significant cost. It was also a lot more obvious what a “document” was back then – usually ink on paper.

In recent years there has been an explosion in the amount, and type, of documents in business. The most obvious are computer documents (Word docs, spreadsheets, etc) and email. Most significant businesses are now heavily reliant on electronic communications. Documents still include paper files, faxes, and accounts, but also include modern documents such as databases, text messages, and even tweets, and huge amounts of documents can be created during the course of an ordinary day. As a result, parties to litigation are often required to handle huge volumes of documents. In large litigations I am involved in, it is common to have tens of thousands of emails and other electronic documents in play.

Reform

The discovery reform aims to modernise the rules to improve the discovery process for the benefit of litigants, and better reflect the modern realities of business and society. I have submitted on the first draft rules, and note a few highlights and changes in the proposed final draft:

• Parties must co-operate on discovery (oh, were it always that way!) and ensure “technology is used efficiently and effectively”. (8.2)
• Parties “must take all reasonable steps to preserve [relevant documents]”, including ensuring that “documents in electronic form which are potentially discoverable [be] preserved in readily retreivable form even if they would otherwise be deleted in the ordinary course of business” (8.3). This is a significant and powerful rule that imposes an express duty to preserve electronic records (see below for more details). When a dispute arises, it may be a prudent strategy to put the other party on express notice of this duty.
• The rules introduce two types of discovery – standard and tailored (8.6). Thankfully, the proposed threshhold of 200 documents for tailored discovery (previously called non-standard discovery) has been dropped. Even small commercial litigations tend to have far more than 200 documents these days!
• Parties must undertake a “reasonable search” for electronic documents, which includes some room for negotiation over whether it is or isn’t unduly costly to do so in certain cases (8.14).
• Original native files (that are discoverable) are to be provided on request (8.27(4)). While I had proposed clearer language here, the rule is still to that effect.
• Documents are to be exchanged by way of PDF where possible (sched 9, clause 1).
• The proposed requirement of chronological ordering is not mandatory – a different order may be applied if more convenient (sched 9, clause 2).
• Exchanged documents should be DRM free (well, it’s not quite as explicit as I had proposed but it’s a start) (sched 9, clause 6.8).

Duty to preserve documents

The most notable change for non-lawyers is the duty to preserve evidence, in particular electronic records. Unlike in the US, there is no tort of “spoilation of evidence” in New Zealand. There can still be serious consequences for destroying evidence, but the threshhold is unclear and there has not generally been a positive duty to preserve documents for the purposes of potential litigation.

The proposed rule 8.3 will change that. It requires a person who knows that a document is “reasonably likely” to be relevant to a legal dispute (whether or not any dispute has arisen) to take “all reasonable steps to preserve that document”. The term “knows” here is likely to be taken as meaning “ought reasonably to know”.

In particular, the rule will require that potentially relevant electronic documents “must be preserved in readily retrievable form even if they would otherwise be deleted in the ordinary course of business”.

The most obvious type of document here is email. Many businesses let their users fully manage their own emails. If a user deletes an email from their inbox, it may be impossible to recover. This new rule will require prudent businesses to ensure there are proper processes in place for retaining important emails. Under the new Limitation Act, it may be necessary to ensure retention of some records for up to 15 years, which is the duration of the new law’s “longstop” limitation period.

The proposed rules do not set out a penalty for failing to preserve documents, but a Court may make adverse findings, or even impose more serious sanctions such as contempt of court, against a party who fails to preserve documents.

While it is far from Sarbanes-Oxley, this change is welcome and good for the interests of justice.

The rules are expected to be implemented by early 2012.

My firm is currently representing a New Zealand software vendor in a litigation in the US against a large, US-based multinational vendor. Like much commercial litigation these days, this has involved processing huge amounts of data to complete the legal “discovery” process. In this case, it has involved sending gigabytes of discovery data back and forwards across the Pacific, as well as within New Zealand and other locations around the world.

Where possible, we have been using secure online services to perform these large transfers (security obviously being a key requirement). However transmitting batches of files of 6+ GB (not unusual for major litigations these days) to California has highlighted New Zealand’s lag in high speed internet connectivity. In particular, the “A” in ADSL comes to the fore, as it means upload speeds from our office are considerably slower than download speeds. Last week it took about 24 hours to transmit 4.2 GB of data to the US, a rate of 210 MB per hour, or about 48 K per second. Plus, it ate up our monthly usage cap.

For some data, it was simpler to have it FedEx’d across on DVD and portable hard-drive.

We have also experienced the sad state of affairs where it has literally been quicker and easier for our client (in Auckland) to jump in his car and hand-deliver DVDs of data to us (also in Auckland), than to transmit it via the internet. Admittedly we are talking about gigabytes worth of data, but that is not unusual these days.

So I will add international litigation to the growing list of “reasons why New Zealand businesses need high-speed, reliable, uncapped internet connectivity”.

A recent UK technology case gives a good example of “buyer beware” and “you get what you pay for” in technology procurement.

The case is London Borough of Southwark v IBM UK [2011] EWHC 599 (TCC). Computerworld has a good write-up of the facts.

In short, Southwark Council embarked on an ambitious systems integration project to build a Master Data Management (MDM) system. Such projects have been fertile ground for legal disputes. The Court noted (in typically understated fashion):

In practice, it has been found by a number of the London boroughs which have introduced or tried to introduce MDM systems that they are complex.

In March 2006, the council’s IT dept drew up a Project Brief. The next month, the council met with IBM, which proposed a solution to meet the Project Brief that would cost between £1.5 million and £2 million. However, Southwark had a budget of only £500,000. As a result, it was agreed that a more limited solution would be carried out, to meet the council’s budgetary constraints.

During 2007 the project got underway and some progress was made, but problems soon ensued (as detailed in the judgment). In October 2007, a council staffer notified the first complaint against IBM, alleging that “the MDM ’solution’ procured from IBM is not fit for purpose”.

“Fitness for purpose” is a legally loaded term. In New Zealand, it is an implied condition of sale (via the Sale of Goods Act 1908) that goods known to be bought for a particular purpose must be fit for that purpose. This applies to business and consumer goods (and “goods” includes software). There is a similar provision in the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, though importantly, that Act applies to services as well as goods, and (in the case of consumers) cannot be contracted out of.

It is interesting to see from the judgment that after significant problems emerged, the council simply blamed IBM for delivering software that was “not fit for purpose”, apparently without looking at whether it (the council) selected the right solution for its purpose. (The fact is, it compromised on its requirements from the outset in order to meet its budget.)

I have been involved in a number of major IT implementation disputes where this has happened, with remarkable similarity. Part of it, no doubt, is corporate CYA culture, but the bigger part of it was (once you reduce it all down) the simplistic mindset that “we paid you truck loads of money, and you’re the IT experts, so if anything’s gone wrong it must be your fault”. Given what actually happened in these projects, this is quite unbelievable.

IBM reasonably responded to the council as follows:

At the time of purchase [the council] chose not to take a total solution/system option due to the cost implications and decided to contract the individual software and services items separately. In addition, [the council] chose to project manage the MDM implementation with assistance from the IBM software services team … and to date the IBM services contract has had only approximately 50% utilisation.

In Court, the judge echoed IBM’s comment above, saying:

[IBM's software] does “what it says on the box”. An analogy is the potential car purchaser who might want an off-road vehicle but, having looked at the brochure for an on-road vehicle, says to the salesman “that’s what I want” and buys that vehicle. There will be no cause of action against the garage that the car is no good off the road. The salesman will reply, with justification: “you got exactly what you asked for”. That is essentially what has happened in [the council's] case.

In my judgement, [the council] got by way of [IBM] exactly what its then team knew that they were getting and what it decided that it wanted and needed within its budgetary constraints.

As a result, the council had its case against IBM thrown out, and was ordered to pay costs to IBM. Moreover, the judge awarded indemnity (full reimbursement) costs in favour of IBM because of the council’s failure to accept a reasonable “walk away” settlement offer before the trial, in circumstances when it should have seen that its case had serious defects.

In other words, the pre-trial evidence put forward by IBM should have made the council realise that neither IBM nor its software was to blame, but that the client had itself simply chosen a cut-down solution that was “unfit” for what it later said it wanted – a situation I have witnessed on a number of occasions (and all of which we successfully settled out-of-court on favourable terms, I might add).

I’m sure the story about the unfortunate “fudge this” comment accidentally left in a set of company accounts is familiar to many lawyers, especially those involved in litigation (or M&A, when rounds of revised documents are flying through the small hours).

This latest example is embarrasing but really not too bad. The real mistake was using the word “fudge”. Anyone who has helped put together (or dissect) accounts and other reporting data knows that occasionally something does need to be a “best estimate” (a more advisable term).

In litigation a lawyer’s job often involves poring over documents, looking for mistakes, inconsistencies, and things that are generally helpful to your client’s case. Much money and sweat is expended on discovery and hoping to find the elusive smoking gun. It does happen, but in my experience unless it’s an outright admission of guilt/breach/bad faith/etc (or something similar), it’s usually not as damaging as it might at first seem.

It’s more productive to focus on the links between documents and “data mine” what you already have (or can get easily). Many lawyers on the other side of major disputes I’ve been involved in have done a terrible job (apparently, based on the results) of data mining their material.

But in terms of what’s in the documents themselves, far better (or worse) than a simple comment, can be tracked changes left in a document. These are great because they record the exact changes made to specific words, the user who made the change and the time. I recently had a situation where this was especially useful in proving certain negotiations between a first and second draft of a contract. There are stories of clients (and lawyers) being caught out by some unmerged tracked changes, or Word’s less-understood “versioning” feature.

The upcoming changes to the District Court Rules make the old discovery process obsolete. It is no longer necessary for the parties to disclose all relevant, non-privileged material. But thanks to email, litigants tend to have far more of the “other side’s” documents than ever before. And thanks to electronic documents, tracked changes and the like, there is more data in the documents than ever before. It will be interesting to see how the new DC discovery process goes, and whether it results in litigants focussing more on data mining what they have, in preference to wrangling over what they don’t.