Federal Judge Burned By Metadata

// A party in a trade secrets case in front of Judge Joy Flowers Conti of the Western District of Pennsylvania really thought they had the goods on the judge. A motion from plaintiffs, Arconic Corp. and Howmet Aerospace Inc., sought Judge Conti’s recusal from the case alleging that several of her opinions in the case were ghostwritten by staff members for the case’s special master. And why’d they think that? Well, the short answer is author metadata.

But in denying the recusal motion, Conti said the ghostwriting allegation is “entirely unfounded,” saying, “To be abundantly clear, the court wrote the opinions referred to by Arconic; the special master and her staff did not write any opinions of this court.”

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The ABA Journal details how the metadata reflected the name of the case’s special master staff — and it’s all about the time-honored tradition of using a previous filing as a template:

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Conti said she wrote much of her decisions using pen and paper and then generated an electronic version using Microsoft Word. She would use a document already docketed as the template for the next opinion or order, using the “save as” function to create a new document.

“This practice promotes efficiency by avoiding the need to retype boilerplate information, such as the caption, keeping the formatting consistent, and providing unobjectionable basic information about the context of the case, such as the factual and procedural history or standard of review,” she wrote.

At some point in the Arconic case, Conti said, she used a document originally created by the special master’s staff as a template for court opinions in the case.

“The ‘author’ field of the metadata is not a smoking gun or a reasonable or reliable way to determine who is responsible for the content of a document,” Conti wrote.

Yeah, copying and pasting into a new document would have saved some trouble here. For her part, Conti promised to either manually update the metadata to reflect the proper name or just start with a fresh doc.

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But honestly, attempting to save a little bit of time and having it blow up in your face and creating a bunch more work/motion practice is basically the most relatable thing. Federal judges — they’re just like us!

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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Courts, Federal Judges, Joy Conti, Metadata, Technology