In order to appropriately take into account the proportionality considerations of Rule 26(b)(1), you should scope your production requests in a way that reduces the potential for production of irrelevant private data.
In this data-privacy class action lawsuit, the e-discovery dispute centered around the defendant’s production request for mobile device data including:
The plaintiffs argued that this request “flies in the face of Rule 26(b)’s relevancy and proportionality requirements,” because it would cause them to produce a large amount of mobile data that was irrelevant to the case. Additionally, plaintiffs contended producing cookies and browsing history were beyond the scope of discovery and hindered their privacy rights.
Download the PDF version of Henson v. Turn case law alert here.
A key factor in this decision was the plaintiff’s willingness to provide data from his phone and browser history which provided the relevant data points without revealing irrelevant person information. The case law was also overwhelmingly in Plaintiff’s favor, as it is a well-established principle that a producing party should be permitted to produce only relevant, responsive data and not unfettered access to phones or computers.