State of New York v. McMahon, No. 25-10601-MJJ (D. Mass. Oct. 6, 2026), full opinion (PDF)
Emails and Word documents produced as PDFs can lose the metadata that shows who wrote each one, when it was sent, and to whom. In a challenge to a Department of Education reduction in force, the plaintiffs said the defendants' PDF production had stripped exactly that information. On October 6, Judge Myong J. Joun of the District of Massachusetts ordered the defendants to produce ESI natively with its metadata. The court had earlier authorized discovery into how the Department actually made its decision. In the court's view, the metadata was potentially material to that inquiry.
What happened
The plaintiffs, the State of New York and others, challenge the Department's reduction in force. In an earlier order, the court found that the administrative record contained "virtually no reasoning" explaining the Department's decision-making. It authorized extra-record discovery into the actual reasons for the reduction.
The defendants produced emails, Word documents, and other ESI as PDFs. The plaintiffs moved to compel native production. In their view, the PDFs omitted metadata such as authorship, dates, recipients, and attachments. In place of native files, the defendants offered to identify the requests to which particular documents respond. They also contended that wholesale native production would impose unnecessary burden.
The motion also challenged documents withheld under the deliberative process privilege, a dispute the court resolved largely for the plaintiffs.
The court's analysis
Applying Rule 34(b)(2)(E), the court noted that ESI must be produced in a form in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form. It then tied the form question to the purpose of the discovery it had authorized. In these circumstances, the court stated, the metadata is "not merely a matter of convenience." In the court's view, the missing metadata may bear directly on chronology, authorship, document relationships, and the identification of relevant custodians.
The court explained that organizing the PDFs by request, as the defendants proposed, does not substitute for the missing metadata. On this record, the court was not persuaded that the burden of native production outweighed its likely benefit. It noted that the materials already exist electronically.
The court granted the motion to compel native production. Future productions responsive to the authorized discovery must be native, with the metadata ordinarily maintained with those files. ESI already produced as PDFs must be reproduced natively to the extent the original native files remain available. If the defendants contend that a category of ESI cannot practicably be produced natively, the parties must meet and confer on an alternative format. That format must preserve substantially equivalent metadata and functionality.
Why it matters
A PDF production carries risk when a case puts authorship or timing at issue. A court that treats that metadata as material can order the same ESI produced a second time.
Organizing PDFs by request does not substitute for metadata lost in conversion. A party resisting native production should be ready to explain why authorship, dates, and attachments do not bear on the issues. Failing that, it needs a concrete showing of burden. On the other side, a requesting party should tie the metadata it seeks to a disputed question, such as who drafted a document and when.
A party producing PDFs should also keep the native originals. It should keep their custodial and collection metadata as well. This order reached earlier productions only where the originals remained available. A party holding that material can comply with a later native order without rebuilding the production.
The full opinion is available as a PDF.
