Greetings,
Back in February, there was a flurry of postings regarding metadata and
the courts. Based on this thread, some of you might be interested in the
following court case (which I've partially summarized here).
 
In Lake v. City of Phoenix, 2009 WL 73256 (Ariz. Ct. App. Jan. 13, 2009),
a case before the Arizona Court of Appeal, David Lake (the plaintiff)
sought a number of public records from the City of Phoenix. He claimed
that the City failed to produce all the records he requested and
intentionally delayed the production of others. Furthermore, one of his
requests involved all the notes kept by seven police lieutenants, but
after he received them, Lake "suspected the notes were back-dated." Lake
promptly requested the metadata relating to these notes be produced (it
was acknowledged that the notes were "created using a Microsoft product").
Lake asserted that the hardcopy notes were useless because without the
metadata there was no way to authenticate the notes.
 
The City refused to release this information arguing that the "metadata is not
a public record." Basing its decision on its analysis of the definitions
of metadata and how the State of Arizona defines the term "public record,"
the Court agreed with the City. The Court concluded that "Lake's request
[for the metadata] does not constitute a public record" and therefore is
not "subject to production under Arizona's public records law."
 
It should be noted that this decision was only one part of the overall
ruling. On the matter of the metadata, the three-panel Court was not unanimous and
there was one dissenting opinion. Judge Norris believed that the question
at the heart of this case is not whether the metadata by itself is a
public record but if "the electronic version of [the lieutenant's] notes,
which includes the metadata, is a public record." She argued that the
"answer to this question is 'yes.'"
 
The case may be read in its entirety here:
http://www.cofad1.state.az.us/opinionfiles/CV/CV070415.pdf
 
An e-discovery blog posting that discusses the case may be found
here: http://ellblog.com/?p=1524
 
Cheers,
Donald Force
Ph.D. Student
InterPARES & Digital Records Forensic Graduate Assistant
School of Library, Archival and Information Science
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC

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