A federal court has ordered 7-Eleven to disclose its metadata in three franchisees' claims that they were targeted for termination for financial, political and racially discriminatory reasons. Metadata is deep down "data about data" in computer files. It is created when documents are created, collected and processed to be produced in discovery.
The franchisees sought metadata of documents 7-Eleven filed in litigation, including dates of creation, authors, custodians, dates of each modification, author of each modification, and data showing who documents were electronically sent to. The Court found the franchisees showed that many paper documents exchanged in discovery were missing source, date, and other key background. The Court rejected 7-Eleven's claim of hardship or undue expense to produce the metadata.
Read the Opinion and Order: Younes v. 7-Eleven, Inc. (D.N.J. 2015) 2015 WL 1268313.
