The latest e-discovery opinion to cause a stir is from a federal magistrate judge well known in the field for his ability to communicate e-discovery “best practices” to practitioners. In Da Silva Moore, et al. v. Publicis Groupe & MSL Group,[1] Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Peck issued the first reported opinion dealing with a technology called “predictive coding.”
While Judge Peck's comments at the hearing preceding the written opinion were quickly heralded by vendors as officially “validating” predictive coding as a judicially endorsed software product, the opinion specifically rejects this misinterpretation.[2] Rather, Judge Peck states that predictive coding is an appropriate tool for certain cases but should be subject to the same kind of rigorous analysis and testing as other methods of document review:
[I]f the use of predictive coding is challenged in a case before me, I will want to know what was done and why that produced defensible results. I may be less interested in the science behind the “black box” of the vendor's software than in whether it produced responsive documents with reasonably high recall and high precision.
Recommended For You
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader
Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
