Court Compels Restoration and Production of Emails from Backup Tapes
United States ex rel Guardiola v. Renown Health, No. 3:12-cv-00295-LRH-VPC, 2015 WL 5056726 (D. Nev. Aug. 25, 2015)
In this case, the court addressed Defendants’ claim that emails stored on backup tapes were not reasonably accessible because of undue burden and cost. Reasoning that “[a]t bottom there will be a burden or a cost, but not both,” the court found that Defendants failed to show undue burden because of their stated intention to rely on a third party vendor, thus reducing the burden of in-house production by adding some cost and that, after disallowing consideration of the cost of document review and storage, the estimated $136,000 for restoration was not sufficient to render the emails inaccessible. In so finding, the court reasoned that Defendants must bear some responsibility for the consequences of the decision to use an “archival/backup solution that did not maintain ESI in an indexed or otherwise searchable manner.” The court also found good cause to compel production and that cost shifting was not warranted.