If there is enough proof to grant them access to these records, why isn't a prosecutor taking over the case ? Giving access to confidential data to the adversarial party doesn't seem very wise.
The bar for discovery in a civil litigation is far lower than the bar for initiating a prosecution. And that's how it should be. If you are convinced that Enron dumped toxic waste in your town on purpose, should you have to prove your case to a point sufficient to initiate a prosecution before you're allowed access to their e-mails? That wouldn't make any sense--the point of discovery is to get all the potentially relevant facts on the table so they can be sorted through.
Also, setting the bar that high for discovery wouldn't make any sense. To initiate an arrest and criminal prosecution, you essentially have to have a "more likely than not he did it" belief in the suspect's guilt. But the "more likely than not" standard is all it takes to win a civil case. So by the time you get enough evidence to initiate a criminal case, you have enough to win a civil case.
Isn't there cases where the court would appointing a neutral party to do the search ? I understand that the plaintiff wants to get access to all these information but it seems unwise to allow them since they already are in a conflictual situation. It gives them power to discover other things unrelated to the case.
Chevron isn't getting direct access to a big e-mail database. Plaintiffs' lawyers will do the search and produce to Chevron only what's relevant, not privileged, not confidential, etc.
To be clear, I mean the counsel representing the activists will do the search and give only relevant documents to Chevron. Since the activists are adverse to Chevron, it wouldn't be appropriate for Chevron's counsel to go through the emails themselves.
