W. Penn. Elec. Employees Pension Fund v. Alter, No. 2:09-cv-04730-CMR, 2013 WL 4803564 (E.D. Pa. June 26, 2013), approved and adopted in substantial part, 2013 WL 4799061 (E.D. Pa. Sep. 6, 2013)

Key Insight: In this Report and Amended Recommended Order, Special Discovery Master agreed with plaintiffs that they should have the opportunity to confirm, though inspection by neutral e-discovery vendor already retained by parties, defense counsel?s representations as to contents of individual defendant?s belatedly-disclosed hard drive, because without the requested examination, there was no way to know if, in fact, hard drive contents were duplicative of data already produced by another party as the individual defendant claimed; Special Master found request was not unreasonable given the centrality of the defendant in events giving rise to the lawsuit, the unsubstantiated nature of defense counsel?s claim that the data was duplicative, that the defendant had provided only limited discovery to plaintiffs, that the defendant, through his counsel, had previously denied possession of any responsive data when the hard drive had been in his home and responsive documents were on his personal computer, much time and money had been expended in the effort to obtain the documents from other sources, and plaintiffs should not be expected to accept without question the claim that the defendant ?simply forgot? he had received company documents prior to his departure; district court subsequently adopted recommendation but modified deadlines and division of costs

Nature of Case: Securities class action

Electronic Data Involved: Material on hard drive belatedly disclosed by individual defendant