In FSP Stallion 1, LLC, et. al. v. Luce, et. al., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68460 (D. Nev. July 21, 2009), U.S. Magistrate Judge Peggy A. Leen, ordered defendants to produce documents in both native format and static images.

During a hearing related to the parties Joint Report of Early Meeting of Counsel and Proposed Discovery Plan, counsel for plaintiff advised the court regarding a dispute concerning whether the defendants should be required to produce electronically stored information ("ESI") with metadata intact.  The court directed the parties to meet and confer.  The parties subsequently agreed on several matters related to ESI, but had an outstanding dispute regarding the production of: (1) accounting data in native format; and (2) metadata associated with emails and similar documents.

The court, after a detailed discussion of Rule 34, ordered the defendants to produce historical accounting data in native format and further required defendants to produce ESI in a static image format with the OCR file and the associated commonly-used metadata fields.