In Kipperman v. Onex Corporation, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71629 (N.D. Ga. Sept. 19, 2008), the court revisited its prior ruling wherein it ordered defendants to produce email from two electronic backup tapes selected by plaintiff.  Plaintiff selected the tapes and also provided search terms.  The court had also ordered defendants to search all email mailboxes on both of the tapes utilizing search terms provided by plaintiff.  The court suggested plaintiff be more "artful" with its search terms and utilize a list of the people, provided by defendants, to review whether all mailboxes needed to be searched.  The court also invited defendants to participate in the determination of the search terms, but defendants did not provide search terms nor seek to narrow the terms suggested by plaintiff.

Defendants went back to the court seeking an order relieving their production of (1) search results that they deem to be irrelevant; (2) documents responsive to a particular search term; and (3) documents captured from the email mailboxes of defendants' subsidiary.  The court granted the latter two requests, but denied defendants' request for an order relieving it from producing certain documents.  The court noted that it had given the defendants every opportunity to narrow the terms to reduce the amount of irrelevant data collected, but the defendants failed to do so.  The court explained, "[t]he court gave defendants numerous tools by which to reduce the burden of email discovery, including an opportunity to limit plaintiff's search terms and an opportunity to provide a list by which the number of people and the number of boxes being searched could be reduced.  Defendants did not take advantage of these opportunities.  Defendants must now lie in the bed that they have made."