Late last month in Mirmina v. Genpact, the Honorable Sarah Merriam of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut properly confirmed that it remains permissible to manually preserve and collect discoverable email.  Her opinion was concise and spot-on, swatting away the plaintiff-movant’s speculative “concern” that defendant must have “withheld communications” that were responsive to the case’s discovery protocols.  Citing Zubulake V, Magistrate Judge Merriam accepted defendant’s detailed affirmation that in-house counsel appropriately coordinated and supervised the manual search for reponsive email by defendant’s ESI custodians, and she therefore denied plaintiff’s motion to compel.

The ediscovery blogosphere lit up once the Mirmina ruling was handed down – see here, here, here, here, here, and on and on.

What’s remarkable about this ruling is that a singularly unremarkable point has somehow become remarkable.
Continue Reading Breaking news from Captain Obvious – it’s still OK to manually preserve and collect ESI