In Secure Energy, Inc. v. Coal Synthetics, 2010 WL 597388 (E.D. Mo. Feb. 17, 2010), District Court Judge Jean C. Hamilton held that FRCP Rule 34 did not require the production of electronically stored information in its native format, but rather permitted such productions, upon request, from the requesting party.

Plaintiffs served its discovery request seeking "all documents."  Unsatisfied with the resulting production, Plaintiffs filed a motion to compel certain documents in their native production. The court ruled that the motion, filed 8 months after defendant's document production, was untimely.  Nonetheless, on the merits, the motion was denied because plaintiff failed to specifically request that documents be produced in their native format with metadata pursuant to Rule 34.  The court found that a native production would prejudice defendants due to the burden involved and the limited amount of time to complete the task.  The court rejected plaintiff's argument that the plaintiff's definition of "document" in its request included documents in their native format.