Date: 2006-06-21 Docket: M040544. Myers J. | Link

In a motion the Defendants seek production of the the hard drive from the plaintiff's home computer for analysis by an expert, as well as the plaintiff's Palm Pilot and video game unit. "It is true that documents contained in electronic form present new challenges. That does not mean, however, that the Court should lose sight of the underlying principles regarding document production. For the purposes of this part of the motion (as opposed to the request for the metadata, which I discuss below) the documents stand in no different light than paper documents, and the hard drive is the digital equivalent to a filing cabinet or document repository. A request to be able to search a party's filing cabinets in the hopes that there might be found a document in which an admission against interest is made would clearly not be allowed. Its digital equivalent should also not be allowed." (para 20) Value of the production outweighed by competing interests, which included not only the time and expense of production but also confidentiality. (para 38 and following analysis for each type of evidence sought).