A commenter tonight asked a pair of very good questions -- on the 5.5 million pages of Vytorin-ENHANCE federal class action discovery production, now underway in a series of cases.
The comenter asked "Is the volume unusual?" and "How does all that paper get handled?" -- Here are my answers (feel free to chime in in comments, you plaintiffs' securities class action lawyers!):
This is -- even when compared to some mass tort case settings -- an extremely large volume of responsive documents.[Part of the reason there are so many here preserved, is likely due to the fact that so many agencies promptly began investigating -- especially Senator Grassley's office -- thus forcing almost real-time preservation of documents, from about September 2007, onward.]
But to be clear, perhaps upward of 50 percent of the pages are likely duplicates (copies of every memo, copied to every recipient, for example -- all produced separately), for that is what the rules require. Even so, there will be small differences -- someone may have scribbled in the margin of his or her copy -- so it all is provided.
As to how it is handled, surely lots of junior people will sift through them, but in a series of cases (like these) with such high stakes, the lawyers will likely scan and digitize the entire dump, to the extent the Congressional Committees haven't already done so (via a third party
service provider -- with full text recognition capability), and then have a searchable database (on CD-ROM, and maybe even on a secure internet file-server, available to all the lead plaintiffs' law-firms, and coordinating counsels) of every document that mentions (for example) both "Enrico Veltri" and "outlier data". One might also search that surname, with the phrase "f*ck off" -- Ooh wait, we already have that document. [But I digress.]
Where was I? Oh. Right. The document data-base service provider will likely be instructed to separately flag, and put in a so-called "sidecar", all the documents with hand-written notes on them.
Those, a senior lawyer with a good grasp of the claims and defenses will need to read carefully. And then, on some of them, s/he will prepare question-lines, for depositions. These documents will then be shown to subject-matter experts -- to get their opinions -- on both sides of the fence. . . .
Any other experiences to share, out there?
Looking beyond the spin of Big Pharma PR. But encouraging gossip. Come in and confide, you know you want to! “I’ll publish right or wrong. Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.” Email: jackfriday2011(at)hotmail.co.uk
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
shearlings got plowed: How Does One Possibly Digest -- And Distill -- 5.5 Million Pages?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Thanks for the shout-out, Insider!
[I loved the green Heinz product comparison, BTW! Sweeeeeeeet!]
Namaste
-- Condor
Post a Comment