Federal Judge Burned by Metadata

[TwiceHorn 32079]

Kind of a funny story came across my google feed.  https://abovethelaw.com/2022/02/federal-judge-burned-by-metadata/  

Apparently, a federal judge in a trade secret case appointed a "special master" for the case.  A special master assists the court/judge with specialized knowledge about the subject matter of a case.  Usually, it's like an IP lawyer with some engineering or scientific training that makes findings that the actual judge can adopt, reject, or modify in making actual rulings in the case.

Apparently, the judge in writing opinions and orders, used the documents generated by the special master as a template or form, thus leaving the author field as "special master" or someone associated with the special master.

One of the parties, presumably the losers on some rulings, made a motion to recuse the judge on the ground that she wasn't independently writing those rulings, based on the metadata, the author field on the document.

Bold move, Cotton.  It didn't work.

As a lawdog, I have been tempted at times to conclude things based on the metadata in a Word doc or pdf, but it's a hazardous business for exactly this reason.  There is actually software to strip metadata from documents to avoid this kind of thing.  I should probably be more rigorous in using it.

[crash_davis 23470]

from all of us non-lawyerly types

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by crash_davis

[Dahobbs 18324]

I don't  understand the headline from abovethelaw. It doesn't seem like the judge was burned at all.  First, I'm not clear how even if everything occurred as alleged by the moving party it actually a basis for recusal. In fact, I'm almost certain that it is not. At most it may be a basis for an appeal of a court's ruling. And in some jurisdictions winning an appeal may get you a new judge as a matter of course (Utah District Court does this). But, more importantly, it is really the moving party that got burned. You come at the king, you best not miss. Basing a recusal motion on a tenuous theory is bad enough. But anyone that has done significant e-discovery work knows that the author field just tells you who (or rather which user id) initially created a document, not who authored its content. This was just bad and sloppy lawyering. 

[TwiceHorn 32079]

33 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I don't  understand the headline from abovethelaw. It doesn't seem like the judge was burned at all.  First, I'm not clear how even if everything occurred as alleged by the moving party it actually a basis for recusal. In fact, I'm almost certain that it is not. At most it may be a basis for an appeal of a court's ruling. And in some jurisdictions winning an appeal may get you a new judge as a matter of course (Utah District Court does this). But, more importantly, it is really the moving party that got burned. You come at the king, you best not miss. Basing a recusal motion on a tenuous theory is bad enough. But anyone that has done significant e-discovery work knows that the author field just tells you who (or rather which user id) initially created a document, not who authored its content. This was just bad and sloppy lawyering. 

Yeah, the stupidity of it is the funny part.

Interesting about the Utah court.  Never heard of that as a routine practice.

[TwiceHorn 32079]

It appears that the plaintiff and recusal movant there is represented by Crowell & Moring, which is, as far as I know, a firm that should collectively know better.

The opinion is here https://casetext.com/case/arconic-corp-v-novelis-inc-2/?PHONE_NUMBER_GROUP=P

And it appears that the plaintiff engaged in one of the most bad-faith of trade secret litigation tactics:  failure to identify trade secrets at issue.  That's always the earmark of a bad case and/or bad lawyering.

Edited February 17, 2022 by TwiceHorn

[Dahobbs 18324]

12 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yeah, the stupidity of it is the funny part.

Interesting about the Utah court.  Never heard of that as a routine practice.

It's not quite automatic, but it is a common practice there. 

[RDCanecutter 26892]

So I should quit calling students "Plagiarists" and start calling them "Your Honor."

[TwiceHorn 32079]

I don't know, does anybody other than lawyers ever examine the properties on a Word doc or pdf and find some interesting "information" about who may have authored the document and/or when?

Seems you rarely have an opportunity to do anything with that information, and you probably had better take it with a degree of salt.

This is one where someone acted, didn't take the degree of salt, and looked foolish in the process.

 

[DalTxHornFan 3130]

8 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I don't know, does anybody other than lawyers ever examine the properties on a Word doc or pdf and find some interesting "information" about who may have authored the document and/or when?

 

Forensic accountant here -- I always look at metadata on errything!

[TwiceHorn 32079]

1 minute ago, DalTxHornFan said:

Forensic accountant here -- I always look at metadata on errything!

One of the favorites was when you get some type of shitty letter from opposing counsel, usually signed by a partner.  You look at the metadata and you may find out which associate drafted it initially.

[Macanudo 13327]

Aren't a significant amount of SCOTUS opinions actually written by the Clerks?

[TwiceHorn 32079]

Just now, Macanudo said:

Aren't a significant amount of SCOTUS opinions actually written by the Clerks?

Yes. At least the research parts of them.  I imagine the prose parts are pretty heavily edited by the justices themselves in most cases. That's a slightly different deal than this, but not much.

As dahobbs pointed out, the judge wasn't really "burned" by this, the plaintiff and its lawyers were.

[DalTxHornFan 3130]

2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

One of the favorites was when you get some type of shitty letter from opposing counsel, usually signed by a partner.  You look at the metadata and you may find out which associate drafted it initially.

Or that the document was originally drafted for another matter altogether.

[F250 29201]

50 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I don't know, does anybody other than lawyers ever examine the properties on a Word doc or pdf and find some interesting "information" about who may have authored the document and/or when?

Seems you rarely have an opportunity to do anything with that information, and you probably had better take it with a degree of salt.

This is one where someone acted, didn't take the degree of salt, and looked foolish in the process.

 

Yes, when I used to work in forensics but it was usually to detect if someone attempted to modify the metadata to cover up changes.

 

[DDD Dad 14650]

53 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

Aren't a significant amount of SCOTUS opinions actually written by the Clerks?

 

50 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yes. At least the research parts of them.  I imagine the prose parts are pretty heavily edited by the justices themselves in most cases. That's a slightly different deal than this, but not much.

As dahobbs pointed out, the judge wasn't really "burned" by this, the plaintiff and its lawyers were.

I can tell you from personal experience that I drafted, with generally very limited editing, dozens of oral argument opinions.  I didn't decide the case, but after I was given direction from my judge, I was given pretty free rein to draft the opinion.  There was only one instance that I can recall where the judge had me rewrite the opinion because he thought I had gotten too cute with it (IIRC I had written it like a Posner opinion with some sort of musical theme or something in the headings).

[jeevsie 3789]

My favorite was a doc that was sent to me with "redacted" sections.  They were just black filled text boxes.  Just move the text box and walla!

[DDD Dad 14650]

11 minutes ago, jeevsie said:

My favorite was a doc that was sent to me with "redacted" sections.  They were just black filled text boxes.  Just move the text box and walla!

[dcbc 14644]

The idea that this lawyer's "gotcha" moment was that the judge may have signed an opinion drafted by a member of his staff makes me laugh.  Even if the judge had, in fact, drafted that opinion, who cares.  If the judge signs the opinion, it's the judge's (court's) opinion.  In Texas, I'd suggest this is commonplace, even if the % varies from court to court.

[Keef 890]

3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Kind of a funny story came across my google feed.  https://abovethelaw.com/2022/02/federal-judge-burned-by-metadata/  

Apparently, a federal judge in a trade secret case appointed a "special master" for the case.  A special master assists the court/judge with specialized knowledge about the subject matter of a case.  Usually, it's like an IP lawyer with some engineering or scientific training that makes findings that the actual judge can adopt, reject, or modify in making actual rulings in the case.

Apparently, the judge in writing opinions and orders, used the documents generated by the special master as a template or form, thus leaving the author field as "special master" or someone associated with the special master.

One of the parties, presumably the losers on some rulings, made a motion to recuse the judge on the ground that she wasn't independently writing those rulings, based on the metadata, the author field on the document.

Bold move, Cotton.  It didn't work.

As a lawdog, I have been tempted at times to conclude things based on the metadata in a Word doc or pdf, but it's a hazardous business for exactly this reason.  There is actually software to strip metadata from documents to avoid this kind of thing.  I should probably be more rigorous in using it.

I'm paranoid about the metadata filters.  I work at one of the big shops (I say that only because I presume we have paid for decent software) and sometimes our metadata filter will do weird things to the doc trying to clean a pdf or word file.  

[Francisco 2.0 32592]

2 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

I don't know, does anybody other than lawyers ever examine the properties on a Word doc or pdf and find some interesting "information" about who may have authored the document and/or when?

Seems you rarely have an opportunity to do anything with that information, and you probably had better take it with a degree of salt.

This is one where someone acted, didn't take the degree of salt, and looked foolish in the process.

 

 

School district I used to work for as their IT director; years ago had an issue with a number of faculty who did not want the superintendent retained.  One of the supporting documents was a letter from the school police chief stating examples such as poor work environment, lack of security focus would cause students to be injured, etc.  General axe grinding stuff.  

One of the high school principals was staunchly pro-superintendent, and wrote a positive piece concerning the superintendent.  

Turns out after looking at the metadata, the principal was playing both sides.  He wrote the letter for both the police chief and himself on his school computer.  Since the metadata was created using his network login information, there was no doubt who the "author" was.  The only other possibility was that the police officer was using the principal's computer...or the principal logged into the police chief's computer.   

Superintendent was retained, police chief resigned...then supt presented the principal with the two letters and the metadata.

Principal resigned not long after.

 

 

[Dahobbs 18324]

3 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

School district I used to work for as their IT director; years ago had an issue with a number of faculty who did not want the superintendent retained.  One of the supporting documents was a letter from the school police chief stating examples such as poor work environment, lack of security focus would cause students to be injured, etc.  General axe grinding stuff.  

One of the high school principals was staunchly pro-superintendent, and wrote a positive piece concerning the superintendent.  

Turns out after looking at the metadata, the principal was playing both sides.  He wrote the letter for both the police chief and himself on his school computer.  Since the metadata was created using his network login information, there was no doubt who the "author" was.  The only other possibility was that the police officer was using the principal's computer...or the principal logged into the police chief's computer.   

Superintendent was retained, police chief resigned...then supt presented the principal with the two letters and the metadata.

Principal resigned not long after.

 

 

What was the end goal here? Cue Joker picture? 

[TwiceHorn 32079]

4 hours ago, jeevsie said:

My favorite was a doc that was sent to me with "redacted" sections.  They were just black filled text boxes.  Just move the text box and walla!

Lol yeah I have seen that.  

[Francisco 2.0 32592]

8 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

What was the end goal here? Cue Joker picture? 

Beats me.  He wasn't a certified supt, so that wasn't the goal.  But his boss was, and maybe he thought she would get the gig, and he would bump up to being principal vs. assistant principal.