Case 5:18-md-02834-BLF Document 843 Filed 01/31/23 Page 1 of 3
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`JEFFREY F. GERSH
`Partner
`Phone/ Fax/ Text
`Mobile
`E-Mail
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`818.444.9222
`310.780.9898
`jgersh@stubbsalderton.com
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`January 31, 2023
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`BY ELECTRONIC FILING
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`The Honorable Susan van Keulen, Magistrate Judge
`United State District Court for the Northern District of California
`San Jose Cou rt h ou se, Cou rt room 6 – 4 t h Floor
`280 Sou th 1st St reet
`San Jose, CA 9 5113
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`Re:
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`In Re Personal Web Technologies, LLC et al., Patent Litigation
`Case No.: 5:18-md-02834-BLF, Case No.: 5:18-cv-00767-BLF,
`Case No.: 5:18-cv-05619-BLF
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`Dear Judge van Keulen:
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`Pursuant to the direction of this Court at the hearing on January 5, 2023, and your
`subsequent court order dated January 23, 2023, Dkt. 842, (“January 23 Order”) following the
`hearing (Dkt. 836), Stubbs Alderton & Markiles, LLP (“SAM”) respectfully submits this
`letter brief per the Court’s direction to respond to those issues set forth in the January 23
`Order.
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`At the request of Personal Web, SAM’s prior client in the District Court, the firm has
`furnished to its new counsel Lewis Roca, nearly 50,000 documents, with all but
`approximately 46 documents furnished on or before January 25. These documents were
`located within multiple repositories maintained by SAM. The multiple repositories include
`SAM’s e-mail server, two platforms used by the firm in maintaining files electronically (one
`an off-the-shelf product called “NetDocs” and another a hard drive the firm has maintained in
`its Santa Monica office called “Santa Server” that is a network-attached storage system and
`occasionally used by the firm as a simple file server primarily for transitory storage), a hard
`drive the firm had received from the McKool Smith law firm, and various hard copy files.
`Our approach to searching the multiple repositories varied in that the same search parameters
`that the Court and counsel had been advised of with respect to the searches conducted on the
`SAM email server were not utilized for the other repositories, (i.e., Santa Server, NetDocs
`and the McKool hard drive). The other repositories did not require the same search
`parameters as the SAM email server because all of the documents searched on NetDocs, the
`Santa Server, and the McKool hard drive already contained documents in some way either
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`15260 Ventura Boulevard, 20th Floor * Sherman Oaks, California 91403
`office > 818.444.4500 * fax > 818.444.4520
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`1316 3rd Street Promenade, Suite 107 * Santa Monica, California 90401
`office > 310.746.9800 * fax > 310.395.5292
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`Case 5:18-md-02834-BLF Document 843 Filed 01/31/23 Page 2 of 3
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`The Honorable Susan van Keulen, Magistrate Judge
`January 31, 2023
`Page 2
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`broadly related to PersonalWeb but clearly either not responsive or manifestly in filed in
`error.
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`In reviewing any/all potentially deliverable documents to furnish to Lewis Roca,
`SAM determined that there were some number of documents that either (a) did not belong to
`PersonalWeb or belonged to other clients of SAM, (b) are SAM work product not shared
`with Personal Web’s directors, officers or employees, (c) are the product of Europlay Capital
`Advisors litigation consulting services whom we understand had provided confidential
`consulting services to outside litigation counsel representing PersonalWeb over the years , or
`(d) are otherwise are not responsive (e.g., documents located within the Santa Server,
`Netdocs or McKool that manifestly had nothing to do with anything remotely germane such
`as a Super Bowl grid pool, e-mails announcing a firm lunch schedule, etc.). Mr. Sherman
`and I made all such determinations of what documents should be furnished to Personal
`Web’s new counsel, or not. Within those four categories of documents not furnished to Lewis
`Roca, the numbers of documents approximate and correlate to above-referenced categories
`(a) 2,500, (b) 9,700, (c) 5,800, and (d) 4,900.
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`We continue to review these 4 categories to ensure that documents were properly
`coded for placement therein (in fact, yesterday 46 documents were furnished to Lewis Roca
`due to the realization that certain documents were incorrectly designated . We also anticipate
`placing into these categories (a) through (d) documents drawn from the physical furnishing
`of documents made to Lewis Roca that were not withheld for one of the four above-cited
`reasons. From a timing standpoint, we anticipate completion of these tasks within
`approximately the next week. We have provided to counsel for the subpoenaed parties
`categories (a) and (c), at their request.
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`Further, in terms of furnishing documents to Lewis Roca as well as their placement
`into categories (a) through (d), SAM attempted to avoid wholesale furnishment to Lewis
`Roca of entire pleadings files and caches of documents produced/documents received in
`formal discovery, and generally avoided placing into those categories filed pleadings,
`discovery pleading documents, or documents produced or received in discovery (though in
`our continued review we do notice some exceptions as a result of the enormity of the
`searches involved). These were areas where over the past several months we had provided
`notice to Lewis Roca of SAM’s intentions.
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`Lewis Roca was advised in approximately the summer of 2022 of the existence of an
`off-the-shelf document management database, CSDisco, that our offices utilized during the
`pendency of the underlying patent litigations, which was intended to be used primarily for
`wholesale document productions. However, because fees were owing to CSDisco for the
`archived storage and management of this database, which were not paid by PersonalWeb,
`CSDisco would not re-activate the archived files until their past due bills were paid. Thus our
`firm has not had access to the CSDisco files since December 2020. We suggested to Lewis
`Roca that if they wanted access to the PersonalWeb files on CSDisco that they needed to
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`Case 5:18-md-02834-BLF Document 843 Filed 01/31/23 Page 3 of 3
`
`The Honorable Susan van Keulen, Magistrate Judge
`January 31, 2023
`Page 3
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`contact CSDisco and make financial arrangements directly with them to obtain access to the
`files.
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`As your Honor knows, SAM is not a party to the present action, has not been served
`with a subpoena, and has only been complying with its ethical obligations viz-a-viz its
`former client. SAM is of the view that this report discharges all of its obligations to its
`former client regarding SAM furnishing documents to its former client per its ethical
`obligations and that no further comment/briefing/complaining ought to be in order. In your
`most recent Order, Your Honor did not invite unsolicited commentary or critique about what
`SAM is hereby reporting. If Your Honor “ask[s] for additional briefing from all parties on
`the remaining issues if needed” then clearly SAM would have a lot to say about what it has
`done to discharge its obligations and that it should be able to move along with its partners’
`law practices no longer burdened by these enormous costs and obligations.
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`Respectfully submitted.
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`STUBBS ALDERTON & MARKILES, LLP
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`Jeffrey F. Gersh
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`JFG:abm
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`cc: Michael Sherman (i/o)
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