The plaintiffs are seven workers who have sued IPI and its former contractor and subcontractor MCC International Saipan Ltd. Co. and Gold Mantis Construction Decoration (CNMI) for alleged labor violations.
Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona, at the last status conference hearing, ordered IPI to submit a notice of certification to the court as to the ability of Litigation Edge to provide data by May 29, and to transfer the data to two hard drives for the plaintiffs.
Dotts said he contacted Litigation Edge, which advised him that it was “impossible to transfer 5.2 million pages of data within seven days of the order.”
“I had a further conversation with Brad Mixner of Litigation Edge who said the data is on the cloud and the download will take a very long time,” Dotts said.
Litigation Edge also confirmed that the order to transfer data to plaintiffs is technologically impossible, he added.
IPI hopes that the court will give it an extension of another week, consistent with the solution proposed by Litigation Edge, which is to transfer copies of the data to the plaintiffs’ lawyer in New York City.
Among the alternative proposals of Litigation Edge is to have the data exported in its native format.
Under this proposal the data will reach the plaintiffs between June 12, and 15, 2020.
Dotts also told the court that he discussed with Litigation Edge the possibility of transferring data from its servicer to Amazon Web Services, a type of cloud.
However, Dotts said the process would take at least 30 days.
He said to satisfy the court order, Litigation Edge is in the process of submitting a declaration that IPI will file with the court once the casino investor receives it.
In addition, Dotts said IPI agrees that the plaintiffs’ counsel may speak directly with Mixner who is based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Litigation Edge is the vendor used by IPI to download electronically stored information requested by the plaintiffs: Tianming Wang, Dong Han, Yongjun Meng, Liangcai Sun, Youli Wang, Qingchun Xu, and Duxin Yan. They are represented by attorneys Aaron Halegua of New York and Bruce Berline of Saipan.
Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona recently ordered IPI to pay $2,000 per day sanction from May 17, 2020 until it complies with the previous stipulated court order.
At the hearing on Thursday, Judge Manglona also ordered IPI to produce bank records and a list of the employment dates of 68 custodians to the plaintiffs by Monday, June 1, 2020.
Judge Manglona likewise ordered IPI to transfer $42,000 to the plaintiffs no later than 14 days after the hearing on Thursday for the costs of paying a new vendor to host and search the data.
In addition, the judge ordered IPI to produce all responsive materials from the 53 boxes of paper documents to plaintiffs within 30 days or file a certificate stating that there were no responsive documents.
The judge also granted the plaintiffs’ request for attorneys’ fees and cost in connection with the motion for sanction in the amount of $40,112.
In April, Judge Manglona gave IPI one month to produce documents requested by the plaintiffs.
IPI, however, failed to file a certification of compliance before the court-scheduled deadline.
