Crane on Law by James Crane

I found the Best Buy Stores, L.P. v. Developers Diversified Realty Corp., (2007 WL 4230806, D. Minn. Nov. 29, 2007), to be a very interesting case regarding reasonable accessibility. Best Buy v. Developers is a breach of contract case with about $800,000 in alleged damages at stake. The defendants filed a motion to compel Best Buy to restore a database used for litigation in an earlier unrelated case to searchable form. Best Buy argued that the data was not reasonably accessible because it would cost at least $124, 000 to restore the offline database.

The magistrate judge ordered that Best Buy restore the database and permit discovery by defendants; Best Buy appealed.

The District Court held that the disabled database was not reasonably accessible. The Court cited that both parties agreed that the data was not in a searchable format and the Court found that $124,000 plus the monthly storage cost of $28,000 was too high a cost. The Court cited Zubulake and stated that reasonable accessibility of ESI is best understood in terms of whether it “is kept in an accessible or inaccessible format (a distinction that corresponds closely to the expense of production).” The Court deemed the archived database to be the equivalent of back-up tapes.

Altep routinely recommends the use of a centralized database repository to our corporate clients to help keep costs down, maximize the use of search tools and techniques, organize precise production and privilege logs, and archive work product. This case may become even more important as more parties see the advantages of using a litigation database.