Judge Herbert Dixon and Todd Flaming: A Real-World EDD Motions Hearing

I attended the Moot EDD Motions Hearing Session presented by Judge Herbert Dixon, Tom O'Connor, Todd Flaming and Browning Marean. The session was set up as motion hearings during which the speakers presented the arguments to put forward when handling EDD issues before the court.

The panellists briefly covered the following contentious issues in their pleadings on a motion to compel:
Scope
Materiality
Costs
Privileged information

Judge Dixon stressed the importance of the pre-trial meeting (to allow the Court to clear its docket !) and ordered the parties to meet again and negotiate the scope of the documents to be provided.

On a subsequent hearing for sanctions, Plaintiff attorney Todd Flaming, had Tom O’Connor of Gulf Coast Legal Tech Center testify on the disappearance of documents, metadata and hypertext links scrubbing, and the disadvantages of obtaining documents in non-native formats.
Todd Flaming and Browning Marean appropriately pointed out the importance to adequately prepare for the meet and confer and the advantages to be accompanied by a knowledgeable IT resource in order for the pre-trial meeting to be efficient.

Judge Dixon referred the participants to Courts’ guidelines among which the Guidelines For State Trial Courts Regarding Discovery Of Electronically-Stored Information.

- JFDR