High Court approves tool to search Quinn family documents

The High Court has backed a computerised searching method to assess the relevancy of more than 680,000 electronic documents for the action by Irish Bank Resolution Corporation alleging businessman Sean Quinn and members of his family conspired to put €455 million in assets beyond its reach.

Mr Justice Raymond Fullam approved IBRC’s application to be allowed to use a “technology assisted review (TAR)” process to go through the documents to determine whether they should be disclosed by the bank in advance of its action.

In proceedings initiated in 2011, IBRC is suing Mr Quinn, members of his family, and a number of companies and individuals, claiming there was a conspiracy to put the assets in the Quinn’s international property group beyond the its reach.

The High Court previously ordered disclosure of electronic documents in the possession of IBRC but a dispute arose as to whether this should be done using TAR or traditional manual methods of discovery.

Coding system

IBRC sought court approval to use the TAR keyword-search and predictive-coding system to go through the documents, arguing it would be more cost effective. A total of 1.7 million documents were identified; following the removal of duplicates, this came down to 680,809.

IBRC said the cost of going through these documents manually would be at least €2 million and would require 10 experienced reviewers. The TAR system would cost a fraction of that and take less time, it said.

IBRC also offered to set up a protocol whereby it would consult with the Quinns and other defendants during the process and allow them to put forward search terms for finding relevant documents.

The Quinns’ expert suggested the traditional manual method would cost €220,000, not €2 million, and could be completed in 113 days by 10 reviewers. They claimed the TAR process was vulnerable to oversight, would not capture all relevant documents and offered no savings in costs.

Mr Justice Fullam, in his ruling, said he was satisfied there was sufficient transparency in the TAR system to discharge a party’s obligations to provide discovery of documents in accordance with court rules.