On 16 February 2016, the UK High Court in Pyrrho Investments and others v MWB Property and others handed down its judgment affirming the use of predictive coding in discovery. The decision marks the first time a UK Court has given judgment on the matter, while noting the limited Irish and US jurisprudence on the topic.
Although the parties had agreed to the use of predictive coding, judicial approval was sought due to its relatively recent introduction into English litigation. In deciding that ‘there were no factors of any weight’ to point in the direction of not using predictive coding for their disclosure process, the Court had regard to the Irish Commercial Court’s decision in Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Ltd & ors v Quinn & ors where predictive coding was endorsed; a decision which was validated by the Court of Appeal.
Predictive coding, often referred to as technology assisted review, is the use of computer software to review and analyse documents, determining if they are of relevance to the issues of the case. It is not without human input however as the computer must, first, be ‘trained’ in order to determine relevancy – it is an iterative process. Based on the training received, the software can review and score documents for relevancy, subject to quality assurance exercises carried out by the human reviewer.
Contributed by Greg Deane, eDiscovery Manager.
