In Recoop LLC v. Outliers Inc., No. 1:24-cv-01810-LJL (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 12, 2026), New York District Judge Lewis J. Liman issued an order regarding Emergency Preservation and Limited Forensic Collection of Recoop LLC business records, requiring Recoop to preserve and suspend auto-deletion for “any Devices/Accounts or physical media that contain Corporate ESI”, with parties to meet and confer regarding selection of a neutral forensic services provider to implement the order.

Case Discussion and Judge’s Ruling

In this case involving claims of trade secret misappropriation, Judge Limon framed the relief sought by Defendant Outliers Inc. d/b/a Thesis Nootropics Inc. and Third Party Plaintiff Daniel Freed as including “directing immediate preservation of all devices, accounts, and media containing Recoop LLC…business records,” as well as the appointment of “a neutral forensic vendor to perform a limited, court supervised collection and imaging.”

Judge Limon granted the motion and imposed a comprehensive preservation mandate. He ordered that “Recoop shall preserve and shall not alter, delete, de-provision, wipe, recycle, or otherwise change the state of any Devices/Accounts…that contain Corporate ESI.” Judge Limon went further by also requiring Recoop to “suspend any auto-deletion, retention policy purge, overwriting, or account deactivation affecting Corporate ESI”. Judge Limo also clarified that this obligation applied to Recoop “as a corporate entity” and “does not require [Anastasia] Alt to take any action in her individual capacity,” signaling sensitivity to the distinction between corporate and personal obligations.

The scope of collection to be conducted as “a read-only forensic acquisition of Corporate ESI” by the neutral vendor was identified as follows:

“a. Company controlled servers, hosted services, and cloud repositories used by Recoop (including, without limitation, company email, cloud drives, collaboration tools, accounting/finance platforms, and communications platforms);

b. Any Devices/Accounts issued by or administered for Recoop custodians that contain Corporate ESI; and

c. Any personal Devices/Accounts of Recoop custodians (including Ms. Alt) only to the extent necessary to collect clearly identified Recoop Corporate ESI (e.g., Recoop email accounts, folders labeled for Recoop, business application workspaces). The Neutral Vendor shall employ targeted, container level collections and shall not perform wholesale imaging of purely personal data.”

Judge Limon’s order also required the vendor to maintain “a complete chain of custody log,” calculate “cryptographic hash values,” and ensure that all data is encrypted “at rest and in transit.” Additionally, the vendor must produce a report detailing “sources imaged, methods used, hash values, file counts, and error logs” and that all collected data be held in escrow by the neutral vendor.

Judge Limon addressed privilege concerns explicitly through a clawback provision under Federal Rule of Evidence 502(d), providing that “no disclosure…shall constitute a waiver of any privilege or protection.” He further ordered that inadvertently disclosed privileged material be “returned and sequestered upon notice.”

Finally, in his order requiring emergency preservation and limited forensic collection of Recoop’s business records, Judge Limon required the parties to “cooperate in good faith with the Neutral Vendor” and to promptly exchange information regarding custodians, systems, and search parameters. He retained jurisdiction to resolve disputes on an expedited basis and warned that “sanctions may issue for any failure to comply with this Order or for spoliation.” At the same time, he made clear that the order “does not determine the scope of discoverability or production,” reserving those issues for future proceedings.

So, what do you think? How often have you seen an order requiring “emergency preservation and limited forensic collection” of a party’s ESI? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case opinion link courtesy of Minerva26, an Affinity partner of eDiscovery Today.

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