Quinn documents face ‘tech-assisted review’

The High Court has backed a computerised searching method to assess the relevancy of more than 680,000 electronic documents for a case alleging businessman Seán Quinn and members of his family conspired to wrongfully convert €455m worth of a bank’s assets.

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

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 Quinns’ international property group beyond the bank’s 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 latest technology or traditional manual methods.

IBRC sought court approval to use the TAR keyword search and predictive coding system to go through the documents because it would be more cost-effective than traditional methods.

A total of 1.7m documents were originally identified but this came down to 680,809.

IBRC said the cost of going through these documents would be at least €2m using the traditional system involving 10 reviewers. The TAR system would cost a fraction of that amount 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 that the traditional method would cost €220,000 and could be completed in 113 days by 10 reviewers. They claimed the TAR process was vulnerable to oversight and would not capture all relevant documents.

Mr Justice Fullam 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.