In May v. FedEx Freight Southeast, Inc., et. al., 2009 WL 1605211 (M.D. La. June 8, 2009), U.S. Magistrate Judge Christine Noland, granted, in part, plaintiff's motion to compel production of documents pursuant to plaintiff's proposed protective order subject to the court's modifications and further ordered the parties to meaningfully meet and confer regarding the accessibility of defendant's email archive system.

Plaintiff alleged sexual harassment against her former employer and a co-worker.  In discovery, plaintiff sought production of several FedEx documents, including the defendant co-worker's personnel file, FedEx's policy governing archival, storage and destruction of documents, and emails referencing plaintiff or between her and the defendant co-worker.  FedEx objected to the production of certain documents in the absence of a protective order and contended that the production of emails would be unduly burdensome because the email is archived in defendant's computer, but not categorized or separated by the names of the thousands of individuals employed by FedEx.

The parties met and conferred regarding the plaintiff's requests, but were unable to reach agreement on the wording of a proposed protective order. Plaintiff moved to compel and the court, modifying plaintiff's protective order, granted the motion with respect to FedEx documents.  The court ordered the parties to further meet and confer regarding defendant's email system, but cautioned the parties that if the court were called upon to resolve the email dispute, it would need to review an affidavit or other evidence originating from FedEx's IT department explaining the process entailed in retrieving the requested emails from FedEx's email system and approximately how long it would take and how expensive such process would be.