Unfortunately, neither my attorneys or the opposing attorneys understood this, and it made it as if we hadn't turned over all of the data. This misinformation caused the opposing party to request a continuance and six years ago today we had to appear in court to explain it; however, my attorneys threw me under the bus and laid the blame on their "IT person" for not turning over the data. The judge scolded the lead attorney and me.
I still get mad about this all over again when I think about it. Could I have handled it better and headed off this issue? Yes. I should have made a better effort in ensuring that my attorneys understand what deduplication meant. They didn't and I took the hit for it.
So, as a result of this court incident, we turned over the EXACT copies of data they already had. It was just yet another delay tactic by the opposing party and in the end, the defendant was still convicted.
So, to make the issue clear:
Deduplication in litigation refers to the process of identifying and removing duplicate documents during the legal discovery and review stages. This is crucial in both civil and criminal law to prevent wasted resources and conflicting outcomes. Legal systems must develop mechanisms to prevent the same issue from being litigated multiple times across different courts or jurisdictions.
In layman's terms, it means if you have exact copies of the same document. Do you really want to review all the copies when you only need to review one?
