IWOI, LLC v. Monaco Coach Corporation, et al.

2011 WL 2038714 (N.D.Ill. May 24, 2011) (Cox, M.J.)

The Plaintiff sought to shift the entire burden of searching after a previously unproduced email was discovered by its expert on the Defendants' computers. While the Court found that the "Defendants failed to produce a clearly relevant and accessible document" it did not find that this failure was deliberately in non- compliance with Rule 26 or prejudicial to the Plaintiff's case. The Court ultimately decided to shift half of the cost of electronic discovery search so as not "to allow Defendants to walk away scot free from such an obvious discovery violation..." One argument which was put forth by the Defendants and rejected by the Court was that Defendants' failure to produce the email was the Plaintiff's fault because it did not identify the sought-after discovery's parameters as Principle 2.01 of the Seventh Circuit Electronic Discovery Pilot Program now requires.