1012-00005 · Stonefield Logistics Group · Discovery/Analysis

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eDISCOVERY STATUS REPORT

ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT — PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL

TO: Patrick Gallagher, Lead Associate, Litigation (General), Calderwood & Harkness LLP Samuel Eklund, Responsible Partner, Litigation (General), Calderwood & Harkness LLP

FROM: David Moretti, Litigation Support / eDiscovery Manager, Calderwood & Harkness LLP

DATE: April 10, 2023

RE: Vantor Holdings Corp. v. Stonefield Logistics Group Inc., Case No. 22-cv-07841 (S.D.N.Y.)

MATTER NO.: 1012-00005

CLASSIFICATION: Attorney Work Product — Privileged and Confidential

PINNACLE FORENSICS PROJECT ID: PF-SLG-2022-0914

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The purpose of this report is to provide the case team with a comprehensive overview of the current status of all eDiscovery processing, review, and production activities undertaken in connection with the defense of our client, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc. ("Stonefield" or "SLG"), in the above-captioned action brought by Vantor Holdings Corp. ("Vantor") through its wholly owned subsidiary Vantor Transport Services LLC ("VTS"). This report covers all eDiscovery activities from the initial matter opening on September 1, 2022 through the date of this report, April 10, 2023, and is intended to provide a status snapshot in advance of the firm's first rolling document production, scheduled for April 14, 2023.

All eDiscovery processing, hosting, and production formatting services have been performed by Pinnacle Forensics LLC, a full-service eDiscovery vendor based in Johns Creek, Georgia. The client engagement at Pinnacle is managed by Nathan Billings, Client Engagement Director, who has served as the primary point of contact for all technical and operational matters throughout the engagement. Pinnacle Forensics was selected following a competitive evaluation of three potential vendors and was formally engaged pursuant to an Engagement Letter and Statement of Work dated September 8, 2022.

The following key headline metrics summarize the current state of the eDiscovery workflow:

• Total data processed from Stonefield custodial sources: approximately 186,000 pages comprising approximately 94,200 unique documents.

• Total documents produced to plaintiff Vantor Holdings Corp. (through its counsel of record, Caldwell Royce & Shapiro LLP ("CRS")): 42,387 documents, via the Pinnacle Forensics hosted review platform.

• Documents withheld on privilege grounds and logged: 1,247 documents, encompassing both attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine designations.

• Documents flagged for substantive attorney review as potentially significant to the defense ("Hot" or "Key" designations): 6,842 documents.

• Technology Assisted Review (TAR) 2.0 model performance: achieving a 91.3% recall rate based on statistical validation sampling, well within industry-accepted thresholds for defensibility.

The first production to CRS was completed on April 14, 2023, encompassing Bates-stamped documents bearing the range SLG-000001 through SLG-042387. While this report was initially prepared in anticipation of that production, the final production numbers have been confirmed and are reflected herein. The production was accompanied by a privilege log containing 1,247 entries and was transmitted under cover letter from Patrick Gallagher to Jason Whitford, Senior Associate at CRS.

It should be noted that Vantor's reciprocal document production of 28,914 documents (approximately 112,000 pages), received on April 28, 2023 pursuant to the Case Management Order deadlines established by the Honorable Margaret T. Calloway, is not covered in this report. A supplemental status report addressing the intake, processing, and initial review of the Vantor production will be prepared separately and circulated to the case team upon completion of those activities.

II. SCOPE OF COLLECTION AND PRESERVATION

A. Litigation Hold Implementation

Promptly upon the firm's engagement by Stonefield, a comprehensive litigation hold memorandum was issued on September 2, 2022 by Patrick Gallagher to the following key Stonefield custodians identified as individuals with knowledge of, or possession of documents related to, the matters at issue in this litigation:

1. Tobias Wren — General Counsel, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc.

2. Priya Ramachandran — Chief Financial Officer, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc.

3. Carlos Medina — Senior Vice President, Operations, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc.

4. Janet Kirkwood — Vice President, Carrier Relations, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc.

5. Raymond Hess — Director, Contract Compliance, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc.

The litigation hold memorandum instructed each custodian to take immediate steps to preserve all documents and electronically stored information ("ESI") in their possession, custody, or control that are related to any aspect of the Vantor/VTS relationship. Specifically, the hold covered all materials related to the Transportation Services Agreement (the "TSA," Contract Reference No. SLG-VTS-2019-0315), including but not limited to the negotiation, execution, performance, administration, and termination of the TSA, as well as the cure notice issued on January 18, 2022, all communications with Vantor or VTS personnel, all internal communications regarding the Vantor/VTS relationship, and all financial and operational records associated therewith.

Signed acknowledgment forms were received from all five custodians between September 5 and September 7, 2022. The acknowledgment forms, which confirmed each custodian's understanding of their preservation obligations and their commitment to refrain from deleting, modifying, or destroying any potentially relevant materials, are maintained on file in the firm's matter records. No custodian raised any compliance concerns or reported any inadvertent spoliation following issuance of the hold.

A supplemental litigation hold memorandum was subsequently issued to Marcus Denton, CEO of Stonefield, on September 12, 2022, upon his identification as an additional custodian (as described in Section II.B below). Mr. Denton's signed acknowledgment was received on September 13, 2022.

B. Custodian Identification

A total of six primary custodians were identified through interviews with Stonefield's in-house legal team and the firm's own analysis of the issues in dispute. The custodians are as follows:

Janet Kirkwood and Raymond Hess were identified as the highest-priority custodians for purposes of collection and review given their direct, day-to-day roles in managing the Vantor relationship and the TSA termination process. Ms. Kirkwood served as Stonefield's primary business-side contact with VTS and directed the carrier reallocation activities that are central to Vantor's breach of contract claims. Mr. Hess was responsible for monitoring compliance with the TSA's service level obligations ("SLOs"), drafting the cure notice that initiated the termination sequence, and liaising with Ashford Meridian LLP on contractual interpretation questions.

In addition to the six custodial sources, the following non-custodial data sources were identified as potentially containing responsive information and were included in the collection scope:

• Stonefield's contract management system — containing the executed TSA and all associated contract documents, amendments, and related records.

• Carrier Performance Portal data — Stonefield's proprietary data platform for tracking carrier performance metrics, including on-time pickup rates, on-time delivery rates, tender acceptance rates, equipment availability, and cargo claims data.

• Transportation Management System ("TMS") records — operational data reflecting freight routing, load assignments, and carrier utilization across the designated lane structure.

• Shared drive repositories — network-accessible shared drives for the Carrier Relations and Contract Compliance departments, containing departmental working files, reports, and analyses.

C. Data Sources Collected

The following data sources were collected and transferred to Pinnacle Forensics for processing:

Email (Strathmore Data Systems / Ashbury Software). Email data for all six primary custodians was collected from Stonefield's Strathmore Data Systems / Ashbury Software environment. The date range for the email collection was January 1, 2019 through September 1, 2022, a period selected to capture the full arc of the Vantor/VTS relationship, commencing approximately three months prior to the execution of the TSA (which was executed on or about March 15, 2019) and extending through the firm's engagement date. This date range ensures coverage of pre-TSA negotiation communications, the full contract performance period, the cure and termination sequence, and any post-termination communications occurring before the initiation of this litigation.

Local and Network File Shares. Local and network-accessible file shares for the Carrier Relations and Contract Compliance departments were collected. These shared drives contained departmental reports, analyses, spreadsheets, and other working files relevant to VTS account management, carrier performance tracking, and contract compliance monitoring.

Stonefield Contract Management Database. All entries in Stonefield's contract management system related to the TSA were exported and collected, including the executed agreement, all schedules and exhibits, any amendments or change orders, and associated metadata.

Carrier Performance Portal Exports. VTS-specific performance metrics data was exported from the Carrier Performance Portal for the period Q1 2019 through Q1 2022. These exports include the key SLO metrics at issue in the litigation — on-time pickup rates, on-time delivery rates, tender acceptance rates, equipment availability, and cargo claims data — broken down by quarter and by lane.

Hard-Copy Documents. A limited collection of hard-copy documents was retrieved from Raymond Hess's office files. These materials included handwritten notes, printed correspondence, and draft versions of the cure notice that were not available in electronic form. All hard-copy documents were scanned, OCR-processed, and ingested into the Pinnacle Forensics hosted review platform for inclusion in the review workflow.

D. Volume of Collected Data

The following table summarizes the volume of data collected across all sources:

The total raw data collected of approximately 78 GB represents a manageable but substantial data universe, reflecting the breadth of the Vantor/VTS relationship and the multi-year date range covered by the collection. The relatively high proportion of email data (approximately 79% of the total raw collection) is consistent with the nature of the dispute, which centers on communications and operational decisions made over a three-year period.

III. PROCESSING AND CULLING

A. Processing by Pinnacle Forensics

All collected data was transferred to Pinnacle Forensics LLC via secure encrypted upload to their hosted review environment. Data transfers were completed between September 12 and September 19, 2022, with Pinnacle confirming receipt and chain-of-custody documentation for each transfer batch. Nathan Billings provided written confirmation that all data was received intact and that SHA-1 hash values matched between the source and destination environments, ensuring data integrity throughout the transfer process.

Pinnacle processed the collected data using its standard forensic processing workflow, which includes the following components:

• De-NISTing: Removal of known system and application files using the National Institute of Standards and Technology ("NIST") National Software Reference Library ("NSRL") hash set. This step eliminates operating system files, application executables, and other non-user-generated files that have no evidentiary value, such as .exe files, .dll files, and other system-level artifacts.

• Deduplication: Global deduplication across all custodians based on MD5 hash values. Where identical copies of a document existed across multiple custodians' data sources, a single instance was retained for review, with metadata reflecting all custodians who possessed the document. This approach eliminates redundant review of the same document multiple times while preserving the full custodian attribution for production purposes.

• Date Filtering: Application of the agreed-upon date range of January 1, 2019 through September 1, 2022 to eliminate documents falling outside the relevant time period. Date filtering was applied based on the "Date Last Modified" field for loose files and the "Date Sent" field for email messages, consistent with industry best practices.

• Text and Metadata Extraction: Full text extraction for all document types, including OCR processing for image-based files (scanned documents, image-only PDFs). Metadata fields extracted include author, date created, date modified, date sent, date received, sender, recipients, subject line, file name, file path, file size, and custodian attribution.

• File Type Filtering: Exclusion of non-responsive file types that are inherently unlikely to contain substantive content, including executable files (.exe), dynamic link libraries (.dll), system configuration files, and other system-generated artifacts.

B. Culling Results

The processing and culling steps described above resulted in significant reductions to the data universe, as summarized below:

Email Data:

• Pre-deduplication: approximately 310,000 email items across six custodians

• Post-deduplication: approximately 82,000 unique email items

• Reduction: approximately 73.5%

The high deduplication rate for email is attributable to the significant overlap in communications among the six custodians, many of whom were routinely included on the same email chains regarding VTS-related matters. This is expected given the organizational structure of the Carrier Relations and Contract Compliance functions.

File Share and Database Documents:

• Pre-deduplication: approximately 24,000 documents

• Post-deduplication: approximately 12,200 unique items

• Reduction: approximately 49.2%

The lower deduplication rate for file share and database documents is consistent with the fact that these sources contain more heterogeneous content and fewer instances of the same document appearing across multiple custodian repositories.

Combined Post-Processing Universe:

• Total unique documents: approximately 94,200

• Total pages: approximately 186,000

Search Term Culling. Following deduplication and processing, a negotiated set of search terms was applied to the document universe to further prioritize documents for review. These search terms were agreed upon with Caldwell Royce & Shapiro LLP during meet-and-confer discussions held on October 14, 2022 and November 3, 2022. The search terms include the following categories:

• Entity and party names: "Vantor," "VTS," "Vantor Transport," "Vantor Holdings"

• Contract references: "TSA," "Transportation Services Agreement," "SLG-VTS-2019-0315"

• Termination-related terms: "cure notice," "termination," "breach," "default," "cure period"

• Operational terms: "fleet," "SLO," "service level," "on-time," "tender acceptance," "equipment availability," "cargo claim"

• Carrier-related terms: "Cascade," "Cascade Freight," "Briarwood," "Briarwood Trucking," "carrier diversion," "reallocation"

• Key custodian names: full names and email aliases for the six custodians and known Vantor/VTS counterparts

• Lane identifiers: "Lane 1" through "Lane 14," "Primary Lane," "Secondary Lane," "Schedule C"

• Financial and rate terms: "rate adjustment," "per-mile rate," "ACV," "annual contract value," "volume commitment," "minimum tender"

• Force majeure terms: "force majeure," "COVID," "pandemic," "suspension"

The full negotiated search term list, including all Boolean connectors and proximity operators, is set forth in Appendix B to this report.

Application of the negotiated search terms to the post-processing universe of 94,200 documents yielded a search term hit universe of approximately 68,400 documents — that is, approximately 68,400 of the 94,200 unique documents contained at least one search term hit and were therefore prioritized for review. The remaining approximately 25,800 documents that did not contain any search term hits were not excluded from the review universe entirely but were deprioritized, with the TAR 2.0 model (described in Section IV.B below) further assisting in the identification of any responsive documents within the non-hit population.

IV. DOCUMENT REVIEW

A. Review Methodology

The document review was conducted pursuant to a two-pass review protocol established in the Document Review Protocol Memorandum dated March 15, 2023, which was jointly prepared by David Moretti and Patrick Gallagher and approved by Samuel Eklund. The two-pass protocol is designed to ensure both efficiency and thoroughness by separating the initial responsiveness and privilege screening function from the substantive analysis and quality control function.

First-Pass Review. The first-pass review consisted of responsiveness and privilege screening. This review was conducted by contract associate Kara Nystrom and senior paralegal Helen Tsao, under the direct supervision of Simone Laroche, Working Associate. First-pass reviewers were instructed to make binary responsiveness determinations (Responsive / Not Responsive), identify documents that are potentially subject to attorney-client privilege or work product protection, and apply initial significance-level coding. First-pass reviewers received a detailed review instruction memorandum and participated in a training session conducted by Patrick Gallagher on March 17, 2023, which included a review of the key issues in the case, the relevant provisions of the TSA, and the coding taxonomy.

Second-Pass Review. The second-pass review consisted of substantive review and coding by Simone Laroche, Patrick Gallagher, and (on privilege questions) Samuel Eklund. Second-pass reviewers performed quality control checks on first-pass responsiveness determinations, confirmed or revised privilege designations, applied confidentiality designations under the anticipated protective order, and assigned final significance-level coding (Hot / Key / Routine). Second-pass review was particularly focused on documents flagged as potentially privileged during the first pass, ensuring that privilege calls were made at the attorney level with appropriate legal analysis.

Coding Taxonomy. The following coding fields were applied to all reviewed documents:

• Responsiveness: Responsive / Not Responsive

• Privilege: Attorney-Client Privilege / Work Product Doctrine / Joint Defense Privilege / Not Privileged

• Confidentiality: Confidential / Highly Confidential — Attorneys' Eyes Only / Not Designated (designations applied pursuant to the anticipated Stipulated Protective Order)

• Significance Level: Hot / Key / Routine (applied to responsive documents only)

• Issue Tags: Subject-matter tags corresponding to the key issues in the case (e.g., SLO Performance, Cure Notice, Termination, Carrier Diversion, Rate Adjustment, Force Majeure, Volume Commitment, Lane Structure, Damages)

B. Technology Assisted Review (TAR) 2.0

To maximize review efficiency and reduce the substantial manual review burden associated with a document universe of approximately 94,200 unique documents, a Technology Assisted Review ("TAR") 2.0 continuous active learning ("CAL") model was deployed on the Pinnacle Forensics hosted review platform. TAR 2.0 represents the current industry standard for technology-assisted document review and has been widely endorsed by courts, including in the Southern District of New York, as a defensible and proportionate approach to the review of large document populations in complex commercial litigation.

Seed Set and Model Training. The TAR 2.0 model was initialized with an initial training set (seed set) of 1,200 manually coded documents, comprising 600 documents coded as responsive and 600 documents coded as not responsive. The seed set documents were selected through a combination of random sampling and judgmental sampling to ensure that the training set was representative of the full spectrum of document types and subject matter within the review universe. The seed set coding was performed by Simone Laroche and Kara Nystrom and was subject to quality control review by Patrick Gallagher.

Continuous Active Learning. Consistent with the TAR 2.0 / CAL methodology, the model was iteratively updated as additional documents were manually coded during the first-pass review process. Each batch of newly coded documents was fed back into the model, allowing the algorithm to continuously refine its predictive rankings and improve its ability to distinguish between responsive and non-responsive documents. This iterative approach is the hallmark of TAR 2.0 and is generally recognized as superior to the earlier TAR 1.0 (simple passive learning) methodology in terms of both recall and efficiency.

Current Performance Metrics.

• Recall Rate: 91.3%. This figure is based on a statistical validation sample consisting of a random sample of 500 documents drawn from the set of documents that the TAR model predicted as "not responsive." This validation sample was independently reviewed by Simone Laroche, who determined that 43 of the 500 sampled documents were in fact responsive, yielding an estimated residual non-responsive rate within acceptable parameters. A 91.3% recall rate means that the model is correctly identifying approximately 91.3% of all responsive documents in the population, which is well within the range accepted by courts and industry authorities as sufficient for defensible use of TAR.

• Precision Rate: approximately 78.6%. The precision rate reflects the proportion of documents predicted by the model as responsive that are, upon manual review, actually determined to be responsive. A precision rate of 78.6% indicates a manageable level of over-inclusion — approximately 21.4% of documents flagged by the model as potentially responsive are ultimately determined to be non-responsive upon human review. This over-inclusion is addressed and corrected during the second-pass review process and does not result in the production of non-responsive documents.

Impact on Review Efficiency. The TAR 2.0 model significantly reduced the manual review burden for the case team. Based on the model's performance, approximately 35,000 documents were reliably classified as non-responsive with high confidence and did not require individual manual review. This allowed the review team to concentrate its manual review efforts on the approximately 59,200 documents requiring human assessment, representing a meaningful reduction in both time and cost compared to a linear manual review of the full 94,200-document universe.

C. Review Progress and Statistics (as of April 10, 2023)

The following table summarizes the current state of document review as of the date of this report:

The reconciliation between the responsive document count and the production count is as follows: 43,634 documents coded as responsive, minus 1,247 documents withheld on privilege grounds, equals 42,387 documents produced — a figure that reconciles precisely with the first production described in Section V.A below.

D. Privilege Review

A total of 1,247 documents were identified as privileged and withheld from production during the review process. The privilege designations are based on the following grounds:

Attorney-Client Privilege. The majority of the withheld documents are protected by the attorney-client privilege. These documents consist principally of two categories:

(a) Communications between Stonefield personnel and Ashford Meridian LLP ("Ashford Meridian"), the law firm that served as Stonefield's commercial and transactional counsel and was responsible for drafting the TSA. The Ashford Meridian communications include substantive legal advice regarding the interpretation of the TSA's provisions, Stonefield's contractual rights and obligations, and the legal implications of the cure and termination process. The primary Ashford Meridian attorneys involved in these communications were Lorraine Beckwith, Partner, and Troy Nakamura, Senior Associate.

(b) Communications between Stonefield personnel and Calderwood & Harkness LLP following the firm's engagement in September 2022. These post-engagement communications include all attorney-client communications related to the defense of this litigation.

Work Product Doctrine. A subset of the withheld documents is protected by the work product doctrine. These documents include internal legal analyses, litigation preparation materials, case strategy memoranda, and other documents prepared in anticipation of litigation by or at the direction of counsel.

Notable Privilege Category. Of particular significance, a category of 84 documents comprising pre-litigation communications between Stonefield personnel (principally Raymond Hess) and Ashford Meridian LLP (Lorraine Beckwith and Troy Nakamura) during the January through March 2022 cure and termination period was identified and analyzed. These communications, in which Stonefield personnel sought and received legal advice from Ashford Meridian regarding the interpretation of the TSA's cure provisions, the sufficiency of VTS's cure efforts, and Stonefield's termination rights under the agreement, were the subject of a detailed Privilege Review Memorandum dated March 22, 2023, prepared by Simone Laroche. The memorandum analyzed each of the 84 documents and concluded that all are properly protected as confidential attorney-client communications made for the purpose of seeking or providing legal advice regarding Stonefield's contractual rights. This memorandum has been circulated to Patrick Gallagher and Samuel Eklund for review and is maintained in the privileged work product file.

Privilege Log. A comprehensive privilege log was prepared by Simone Laroche and Helen Tsao to accompany the first production. Each of the 1,247 privilege log entries includes the following information: date of the document, author/sender, recipient(s), a general subject-matter description sufficient to allow opposing counsel to assess the privilege claim without revealing privileged content, and the specific privilege basis asserted (attorney-client privilege, work product doctrine, or both). The privilege log was delivered concurrently with the first production on April 14, 2023.

E. Clawback Protections

The parties entered into an FRE 502(d) stipulation providing that inadvertent production of privileged or protected documents does not constitute a waiver of any applicable privilege or protection. This stipulation was submitted to the Court and was entered as an order by the Honorable Margaret T. Calloway on February 17, 2023 as part of the Case Management Order. The 502(d) order provides a critical safety net in the event that any privileged documents are inadvertently included in a production, and is particularly important given the volume of documents processed and the use of technology-assisted review.

Notwithstanding the protections afforded by the 502(d) order, the case team has implemented robust quality control measures to minimize the risk of inadvertent privilege waiver:

• Second-pass privilege review: All documents coded as potentially privileged during the first-pass review are subject to a second-pass privilege review by Simone Laroche (and, on borderline questions, by Samuel Eklund at the partner level) before any final privilege determination is made.

• Pre-production privilege sweep: Prior to each production, a final automated privilege sweep is run against the production set to flag any documents that may have been inadvertently omitted from the privilege review queue.

• Partner-level review of borderline calls: All privilege determinations that present close questions — including documents in which privileged and non-privileged content are intermingled, documents involving dual-purpose communications, and documents in which the privilege claim rests on the characterization of the communication as legal advice rather than business advice — are escalated to Samuel Eklund for final determination.

V. PRODUCTION SUMMARY

A. First Production — Stonefield

The first production of documents by Stonefield to Vantor (through CRS) was completed on April 14, 2023. The key details of the production are as follows:

The production format was agreed upon with CRS during meet-and-confer discussions and provides documents in both native format (for electronically created documents such as spreadsheets and presentations where native format preserves functionality) and TIFF images with extracted text and metadata load files (for email and standard documents). This dual-format approach is consistent with the parties' obligations under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and reflects the standard production protocol in the Southern District of New York.

Access credentials to the production on the Pinnacle Forensics hosted review platform were provided to CRS to facilitate their review of the produced documents. The production was transmitted under a cover letter from Patrick Gallagher to Jason Whitford, Senior Associate at CRS, which identified the Bates range, confirmed the format, and referenced the accompanying privilege log.

Reconciliation. The production count of 42,387 documents reconciles precisely with the review coding results: 43,634 documents coded as responsive during review, minus 1,247 documents withheld on privilege grounds, yields 42,387 documents produced. No discrepancies exist between the review coding and the production set.

B. Privilege Log

The privilege log accompanying the first production contains 1,247 entries, each reflecting a document or communication withheld from production on the basis of attorney-client privilege, work product doctrine, or both. The privilege log was prepared by Simone Laroche and Helen Tsao and was delivered concurrently with the first production on April 14, 2023.

A supplemental privilege log is anticipated as additional review phases continue and as new documents are identified that require privilege analysis. Based on the trajectory of the review process, it is anticipated that additional privilege designations will be made as the case progresses through fact discovery. Ultimately, 218 additional privilege log entries were prepared and served on June 30, 2023; those supplemental entries will be addressed in a future eDiscovery status report.

VI. KEY / HOT DOCUMENT SUMMARY

During the document review process, a total of 6,842 documents were flagged with "Hot" or "Key" significance designations, indicating that these documents are of particular importance to the substantive defense of the case and require focused attorney analysis. These documents have been organized into the following topic categories:

VTS Performance / SLO Failures

Documents in this category reflect VTS's service level performance during the critical Q4 2021 period, which forms the basis for Stonefield's cure notice and termination. The Carrier Performance Portal data and associated internal analyses demonstrate the following performance metrics for VTS during Q4 2021, measured against the SLO thresholds established in the TSA:

The cargo claims data further reflects that VTS incurred 16 cargo claims totaling $387,400 during the November–December 2021 period alone, representing a material deterioration in claims performance relative to prior quarters. These documents are critical to establishing the factual predicate for Stonefield's termination of the TSA for cause.

Cure Notice and Termination

This category includes drafts and final versions of the key documents in the cure and termination sequence:

• The January 18, 2022 cure notice from Raymond Hess to Sandra Milescu (VTS Vice President, Account Management), setting forth VTS's SLO failures and demanding cure within the 60-day cure period provided under the TSA.

• Vantor's February 14, 2022 response from Derek Pruitt (VTS Senior Vice President, Operations) to Janet Kirkwood, contesting certain of the SLO calculations and asserting that VTS was taking corrective action.

• Tobias Wren's March 4, 2022 termination letter, formally terminating the TSA effective upon delivery, based on VTS's failure to cure the identified SLO deficiencies within the cure period.

• Internal drafts, redlines, and related communications reflecting the iterative development of each of these documents.

Internal Communications re Carrier Diversion

This category includes communications among Stonefield personnel regarding the reallocation of freight volume from VTS to alternative carriers, which is a central issue in Vantor's counterclaim. Of particular significance is Janet Kirkwood's September 22, 2021 email to Carlos Medina, in which she references the possibility of moving volume to Cascade Freight Systems Inc. and Briarwood Trucking Co. on Lanes 8–14, stating:

"If VTS doesn't get its act together by Q1 I think we pull the plug on the whole contract."

This document has been flagged as a risk document requiring careful handling. The language used by Ms. Kirkwood could be characterized by opposing counsel as reflecting a preexisting intent to terminate the VTS relationship independent of the SLO performance failures, potentially undermining Stonefield's position that the termination was a good-faith exercise of its contractual rights in response to VTS's material breach. This document should be analyzed in connection with deposition preparation for Ms. Kirkwood and in the context of any anticipated motion practice regarding Stonefield's termination rationale.

Rate Adjustment Analysis

Documents in this category relate to the annual rate adjustment mechanism under the TSA and include a February 2022 memorandum from Ashford Meridian LLP analyzing the projected April 2022 rate adjustment. The memorandum calculates that the weighted average per-mile rate under the TSA would increase from $2.87 to $3.28, representing a 14.3% increase, and projects that this adjustment would result in approximately $6.2 million in additional annual transportation costs for Stonefield. These documents are relevant to Vantor's claim that Stonefield terminated the TSA in part to avoid the rate increase, and will need to be addressed in connection with Stonefield's defense.

Force Majeure Invocation

This category includes documentation of Stonefield's invocation of the force majeure provision under TSA Section 12.1 in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. The force majeure invocation covered the period of April 2020 through September 2020 and resulted in a temporary suspension or modification of certain performance obligations under the TSA. These documents are relevant to the calculation of volume tender obligations and the adjusted Annual Contract Value ("ACV") during Contract Year 2.

Volume Tender Records

Documents reflecting actual volume tenders during the relevant contract years, including:

• Contract Year 2 (April 2020 – March 2021): actual tenders of $31.8 million against an adjusted ACV of $21.6 million (as adjusted post–force majeure invocation), reflecting that Stonefield's actual tenders substantially exceeded the adjusted contractual minimum.

• Contract Year 3 (partial: April 2021 – January 2022): actual tenders of $36.5 million through January 2022, the last month before termination.

These volume tender records are significant to the damages analysis and will be shared with the firm's retained experts at Kensington Analytics Group LLC for their review.

Schedule C / Lane Exclusivity

This category includes documents related to the 14 designated "Primary Lanes" set forth in Schedule C to the TSA, as well as carrier contracts and routing data for the alternative carriers — Cascade Freight Systems Inc. (Columbus, Ohio) and Briarwood Trucking Co. (Arlington, Virginia) — that Stonefield engaged for freight services on certain lanes. The documents reflect that Cascade and Briarwood usage was limited to Lanes 8–14, which are classified as "Secondary Lanes" under Schedule C and are subject to different exclusivity provisions than the Primary Lanes. These documents are central to Stonefield's defense against Vantor's claim that the use of alternative carriers constituted a breach of the TSA's exclusivity provisions.

Hot Document Index. A detailed indexed compilation of all 6,842 flagged documents, organized by topic category and cross-referenced to Bates numbers, custodians, dates, and issue tags, is currently being prepared by Kara Nystrom and Helen Tsao for delivery to the case team. The anticipated completion date for this index is mid-May 2023.

VII. VANTOR PRODUCTION — PRELIMINARY STATUS

Pursuant to the Case Management Order entered by Judge Calloway, Vantor is required to make its first document production on or before April 28, 2023. Based on meet-and-confer discussions with CRS and the Vantor production estimates provided in Vantor's initial disclosures, the production is expected to consist of approximately 28,914 documents comprising approximately 112,000 pages.

Pinnacle Forensics has been notified of the anticipated incoming production and is prepared to ingest and process the Vantor documents upon receipt. Nathan Billings has confirmed that Pinnacle's hosted review environment has sufficient capacity to accommodate the additional data volume and that the ingestion and processing workflow can be initiated within 48 hours of receipt.

The review protocol for the incoming Vantor production will follow the same two-pass methodology established for the Stonefield document review, as described in Section IV.A above. In addition, the TAR 2.0 model will be retrained on the Vantor document set to account for the different document types, vocabulary, and subject-matter characteristics that may be present in the opposing party's production. The retraining process will involve coding a new seed set of Vantor-produced documents and integrating those coding decisions into the model to optimize its performance on the incoming document population.

Key categories of documents anticipated in the Vantor production include:

• VTS internal communications regarding the Stonefield account and fleet management decisions during the relevant time period

• VTS financial records relating to revenue derived from the Stonefield relationship and mitigation efforts following termination of the TSA

• Mitigation documentation reflecting VTS's efforts to secure replacement business after the termination

• Internal VTS analyses of SLO performance and any corrective action plans prepared in response to Stonefield's cure notice

A separate analysis memorandum addressing the key findings from the initial review of the Vantor production will be prepared upon completion of the first-pass review. This memorandum was ultimately prepared by Simone Laroche and Kara Nystrom on May 12, 2023 and will be the subject of a separate reporting.

VIII. COST SUMMARY AND PROJECTIONS

A. eDiscovery Costs Incurred to Date

The following table summarizes Pinnacle Forensics costs incurred from the inception of the engagement through the reporting period (September 2022 – April 2023):

These Pinnacle Forensics costs are included within the approximately $620,000 in total costs and disbursements tracked for the matter through the reporting period. Internal review costs — comprising the time of Kara Nystrom (contract associate), Helen Tsao (senior paralegal), and Simone Laroche (working associate) dedicated to the eDiscovery review process — are billed within the firm's overall fee totals and are reflected in the quarterly billing summaries provided to Stonefield's General Counsel, Tobias Wren.

B. Projected Additional Costs

The following additional eDiscovery-related costs are anticipated as the matter progresses through the remaining fact discovery period:

Supplemental Stonefield Productions. Additional responsive documents and supplemental privilege log entries may be identified as the review continues and as additional discovery issues develop. The costs associated with any supplemental production formatting and delivery are expected to be incremental and within the scope of the existing hosting arrangement with Pinnacle Forensics.

Vantor Production Ingestion and Processing. The ingestion and processing of Vantor's anticipated production of approximately 28,914 documents (approximately 112,000 pages) is estimated to cost $15,000–$20,000 for processing services, with additional hosting fees continuing at the existing monthly rate of $18,200 per month to accommodate the expanded data volume.

Expert Document Sets. The assembly and delivery of curated document sets to the firm's retained testifying experts at Kensington Analytics Group LLC — Dr. Evelyn Rosser and Michael Chung — for their use in connection with damages rebuttal work is estimated to cost $5,000–$8,000. This estimate includes the cost of extracting, formatting, and delivering the relevant subsets of produced and received documents in a format suitable for expert review and analysis.

Potential Additional Productions. The Second Request for Production, which was served by Calderwood & Harkness on CRS on May 5, 2023, may yield additional supplemental production from Vantor requiring processing. The costs associated with any such supplemental production will be assessed upon receipt and reported in a subsequent status update.

IX. OUTSTANDING ITEMS AND ACTION ITEMS

The following action items are outstanding as of the date of this report and require attention from the identified responsible parties:

With respect to Action Item 7, it should be noted that the current TAR 2.0 recall rate of 91.3% is well within the thresholds accepted by courts in this district and nationally as sufficient for defensible use of technology-assisted review. Comprehensive validation documentation — including the statistical methodology employed, seed set composition, recall and precision calculations, and confidence intervals — is being maintained in Appendix C to this report and will be available for disclosure in the event that opposing counsel challenges the adequacy of Stonefield's review methodology.

X. APPENDICES (REFERENCED)

The following appendices are referenced in this report and are maintained as separate attachments to this memorandum:

Appendix A — Custodian List and Data Source Inventory. A table listing each of the six primary custodians, the data sources collected from each, the date ranges covered, and the volume statistics (raw data volume, pre-deduplication document counts, and post-deduplication document counts) for each custodian and data source.

Appendix B — Search Term List. The complete list of negotiated search terms applied during the culling phase, including all Boolean connectors, proximity operators, and wildcard specifications, as agreed upon with Caldwell Royce & Shapiro LLP during the October 14 and November 3, 2022 meet-and-confer sessions.

Appendix C — TAR 2.0 Validation Statistics. Detailed statistical methodology and supporting documentation for the TAR 2.0 model, including seed set composition, the iterative training process, the validation sampling methodology, recall and precision calculations, confidence intervals, and the statistical basis for the conclusion that the model's 91.3% recall rate satisfies industry and judicial standards for defensibility.

Appendix D — Pinnacle Forensics Invoicing Summary. An itemized cost breakdown by service category for all Pinnacle Forensics invoices received through the reporting period, reconciled to the summary figures set forth in Section VIII.A of this report.

Appendix E — Production Bates Range Index. A detailed index of the first production (SLG-000001 through SLG-042387), organized by custodian and date, identifying the Bates range segments attributable to each custodian's documents and each date range within the production.

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This document constitutes attorney work product prepared in anticipation of litigation and is protected from disclosure under the work product doctrine. The information contained herein is privileged and confidential and is intended solely for use by the members of the Calderwood & Harkness LLP engagement team assigned to Matter No. 1012-00005. Do not distribute this document outside the Calderwood & Harkness LLP engagement team without prior written authorization from Samuel Eklund, Responsible Partner.

Prepared by:

David Moretti Litigation Support / eDiscovery Manager Calderwood & Harkness LLP 200 Park Avenue, 38th Floor New York, NY 10166

Distribution: Patrick Gallagher, Lead Associate; Samuel Eklund, Responsible Partner — Calderwood & Harkness LLP (internal distribution only)

Custodian	Title	Relevance
Janet Kirkwood	VP, Carrier Relations	Primary relationship manager for VTS account; directed carrier diversification activities; central to Lanes 8–14 reallocation decisions
Raymond Hess	Director, Contract Compliance	Administered the TSA; drafted and issued the January 18, 2022 cure notice; communicated directly with Ashford Meridian LLP on termination rights
Carlos Medina	SVP, Operations	Supervised operational performance metrics; oversaw fleet and capacity management
Tobias Wren	General Counsel	Managed legal review of TSA termination and engaged outside counsel
Priya Ramachandran	CFO	Financial oversight of VTS relationship; internal cost-benefit analyses
Marcus Denton	CEO	Executive-level communications regarding VTS relationship; strategic decisions regarding carrier diversification
Data Source	Volume	Notes
Email (Exchange / O365)	~62 GB	~310,000 email items across 6 custodians (pre-deduplication and culling)
File shares and databases	~14 GB	Carrier Relations and Contract Compliance shared drives; contract management database; TMS records; Carrier Performance Portal exports
Scanned hard copies	~2 GB	Raymond Hess office files
Total	~78 GB
Category	Document Count
Total documents in review universe	~94,200
Documents manually reviewed (first pass completed)	~59,200
Documents classified as non-responsive by TAR (high confidence, no manual review required)	~35,000
Documents coded as responsive (manual review)	43,634
Documents coded as not responsive (manual review)	15,566
Documents coded as privileged (withheld from production)	1,247
Documents flagged as "Hot" or "Key" for substantive attorney review	6,842
Production Detail	Information
Production Date	April 14, 2023
Total Documents Produced	42,387
Total Pages (approximate)	186,000
Bates Range	SLG-000001 through SLG-042387

Production Format	Native format and TIFF images with extracted text and metadata load files
Production Platform	Pinnacle Forensics hosted review platform
Accompanying Privilege Log	1,247 entries
Performance Metric	Q4 2021 Actual	TSA SLO Threshold	Variance
On-Time Pickup Rate	78.2%	95.0%	-16.8 pp
On-Time Delivery Rate	81.6%	93.0%	-11.4 pp
Tender Acceptance Rate	71.4%	90.0%	-18.6 pp
Equipment Availability	62.0%	85.0%	-23.0 pp
Cargo Claims Ratio	1.07%	≤0.50%	+0.57 pp
Service Category	Cost
Data processing (ingestion, de-NISTing, deduplication, extraction)	$42,500
Hosting fees ($18,200/month × ~7 months)	$127,400
Production formatting and delivery	$8,600
Total Pinnacle Forensics costs to date	$178,500
No.	Action Item	Responsible Party	Target Date
1	Finalize first production: confirm Bates numbering and load files with Pinnacle Forensics before April 14 delivery	David Moretti (coordinating with Nathan Billings, Pinnacle)	April 13, 2023
2	Privilege log QC: perform final quality check on all 1,247 privilege log entries before service	Helen Tsao & Simone Laroche	April 13, 2023
3	Hot document index: complete indexed compilation of 6,842 flagged documents organized by topic for case team review	Kara Nystrom & Helen Tsao	Mid-May 2023
4	Vantor production intake: prepare review workspace and TAR retraining plan for Vantor's anticipated April 28 production	David Moretti & Pinnacle Forensics	April 25, 2023
5	Supplemental privilege review: monitor for additional privilege documents identified during second-phase review; prepare supplemental privilege log as needed	Simone Laroche	Ongoing (ultimately 218 additional entries logged June 30, 2023)
6	Third-party subpoena productions: prepare intake workflow for anticipated productions from Cascade Freight Systems Inc. and Briarwood Trucking Co. pursuant to subpoenas duces tecum	David Moretti	TBD (subpoenas issued June 28, 2023)
7	TAR validation reporting: maintain ongoing TAR 2.0 model validation documentation for potential disclosure to opposing counsel or court if challenged	David Moretti & Simone Laroche	Ongoing

eDISCOVERY STATUS REPORT
ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT — PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL
TO: Patrick Gallagher, Lead Associate, Litigation (General), Calderwood & Harkness LLP Samuel Eklund, Responsible Partner, Litigation (General), Calderwood & Harkness LLP
FROM: David Moretti, Litigation Support / eDiscovery Manager, Calderwood & Harkness LLP
DATE: April 10, 2023
RE: Vantor Holdings Corp. v. Stonefield Logistics Group Inc., Case No. 22-cv-07841 (S.D.N.Y.)
MATTER NO.: 1012-00005
CLASSIFICATION: Attorney Work Product — Privileged and Confidential
PINNACLE FORENSICS PROJECT ID: PF-SLG-2022-0914
I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The purpose of this report is to provide the case team with a comprehensive overview of the current status of all eDiscovery processing, review, and production activities undertaken in connection with the defense of our client, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc. ("Stonefield" or "SLG"), in the above-captioned action brought by Vantor Holdings Corp. ("Vantor") through its wholly owned subsidiary Vantor Transport Services LLC ("VTS"). This report covers all eDiscovery activities from the initial matter opening on September 1, 2022 through the date of this report, April 10, 2023, and is intended to provide a status snapshot in advance of the firm's first rolling document production, scheduled for April 14, 2023.
All eDiscovery processing, hosting, and production formatting services have been performed by Pinnacle Forensics LLC, a full-service eDiscovery vendor based in Johns Creek, Georgia. The client engagement at Pinnacle is managed by Nathan Billings, Client Engagement Director, who has served as the primary point of contact for all technical and operational matters throughout the engagement. Pinnacle Forensics was selected following a competitive evaluation of three potential vendors and was formally engaged pursuant to an Engagement Letter and Statement of Work dated September 8, 2022.
The following key headline metrics summarize the current state of the eDiscovery workflow:
• Total data processed from Stonefield custodial sources: approximately 186,000 pages comprising approximately 94,200 unique documents.
• Total documents produced to plaintiff Vantor Holdings Corp. (through its counsel of record, Caldwell Royce & Shapiro LLP ("CRS")): 42,387 documents, via the Pinnacle Forensics hosted review platform.
• Documents withheld on privilege grounds and logged: 1,247 documents, encompassing both attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine designations.
• Documents flagged for substantive attorney review as potentially significant to the defense ("Hot" or "Key" designations): 6,842 documents.
• Technology Assisted Review (TAR) 2.0 model performance: achieving a 91.3% recall rate based on statistical validation sampling, well within industry-accepted thresholds for defensibility.
The first production to CRS was completed on April 14, 2023, encompassing Bates-stamped documents bearing the range SLG-000001 through SLG-042387. While this report was initially prepared in anticipation of that production, the final production numbers have been confirmed and are reflected herein. The production was accompanied by a privilege log containing 1,247 entries and was transmitted under cover letter from Patrick Gallagher to Jason Whitford, Senior Associate at CRS.
It should be noted that Vantor's reciprocal document production of 28,914 documents (approximately 112,000 pages), received on April 28, 2023 pursuant to the Case Management Order deadlines established by the Honorable Margaret T. Calloway, is not covered in this report. A supplemental status report addressing the intake, processing, and initial review of the Vantor production will be prepared separately and circulated to the case team upon completion of those activities.
II. SCOPE OF COLLECTION AND PRESERVATION
A. Litigation Hold Implementation
Promptly upon the firm's engagement by Stonefield, a comprehensive litigation hold memorandum was issued on September 2, 2022 by Patrick Gallagher to the following key Stonefield custodians identified as individuals with knowledge of, or possession of documents related to, the matters at issue in this litigation:
1. Tobias Wren — General Counsel, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc.
2. Priya Ramachandran — Chief Financial Officer, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc.
3. Carlos Medina — Senior Vice President, Operations, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc.
4. Janet Kirkwood — Vice President, Carrier Relations, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc.
5. Raymond Hess — Director, Contract Compliance, Stonefield Logistics Group Inc.
The litigation hold memorandum instructed each custodian to take immediate steps to preserve all documents and electronically stored information ("ESI") in their possession, custody, or control that are related to any aspect of the Vantor/VTS relationship. Specifically, the hold covered all materials related to the Transportation Services Agreement (the "TSA," Contract Reference No. SLG-VTS-2019-0315), including but not limited to the negotiation, execution, performance, administration, and termination of the TSA, as well as the cure notice issued on January 18, 2022, all communications with Vantor or VTS personnel, all internal communications regarding the Vantor/VTS relationship, and all financial and operational records associated therewith.
Signed acknowledgment forms were received from all five custodians between September 5 and September 7, 2022. The acknowledgment forms, which confirmed each custodian's understanding of their preservation obligations and their commitment to refrain from deleting, modifying, or destroying any potentially relevant materials, are maintained on file in the firm's matter records. No custodian raised any compliance concerns or reported any inadvertent spoliation following issuance of the hold.
A supplemental litigation hold memorandum was subsequently issued to Marcus Denton, CEO of Stonefield, on September 12, 2022, upon his identification as an additional custodian (as described in Section II.B below). Mr. Denton's signed acknowledgment was received on September 13, 2022.
B. Custodian Identification
A total of six primary custodians were identified through interviews with Stonefield's in-house legal team and the firm's own analysis of the issues in dispute. The custodians are as follows:
Janet Kirkwood and Raymond Hess were identified as the highest-priority custodians for purposes of collection and review given their direct, day-to-day roles in managing the Vantor relationship and the TSA termination process. Ms. Kirkwood served as Stonefield's primary business-side contact with VTS and directed the carrier reallocation activities that are central to Vantor's breach of contract claims. Mr. Hess was responsible for monitoring compliance with the TSA's service level obligations ("SLOs"), drafting the cure notice that initiated the termination sequence, and liaising with Ashford Meridian LLP on contractual interpretation questions.
In addition to the six custodial sources, the following non-custodial data sources were identified as potentially containing responsive information and were included in the collection scope:
• Stonefield's contract management system — containing the executed TSA and all associated contract documents, amendments, and related records.
• Carrier Performance Portal data — Stonefield's proprietary data platform for tracking carrier performance metrics, including on-time pickup rates, on-time delivery rates, tender acceptance rates, equipment availability, and cargo claims data.
• Transportation Management System ("TMS") records — operational data reflecting freight routing, load assignments, and carrier utilization across the designated lane structure.
• Shared drive repositories — network-accessible shared drives for the Carrier Relations and Contract Compliance departments, containing departmental working files, reports, and analyses.
C. Data Sources Collected
The following data sources were collected and transferred to Pinnacle Forensics for processing:
Email (Strathmore Data Systems / Ashbury Software). Email data for all six primary custodians was collected from Stonefield's Strathmore Data Systems / Ashbury Software environment. The date range for the email collection was January 1, 2019 through September 1, 2022, a period selected to capture the full arc of the Vantor/VTS relationship, commencing approximately three months prior to the execution of the TSA (which was executed on or about March 15, 2019) and extending through the firm's engagement date. This date range ensures coverage of pre-TSA negotiation communications, the full contract performance period, the cure and termination sequence, and any post-termination communications occurring before the initiation of this litigation.
Local and Network File Shares. Local and network-accessible file shares for the Carrier Relations and Contract Compliance departments were collected. These shared drives contained departmental reports, analyses, spreadsheets, and other working files relevant to VTS account management, carrier performance tracking, and contract compliance monitoring.
Stonefield Contract Management Database. All entries in Stonefield's contract management system related to the TSA were exported and collected, including the executed agreement, all schedules and exhibits, any amendments or change orders, and associated metadata.
Carrier Performance Portal Exports. VTS-specific performance metrics data was exported from the Carrier Performance Portal for the period Q1 2019 through Q1 2022. These exports include the key SLO metrics at issue in the litigation — on-time pickup rates, on-time delivery rates, tender acceptance rates, equipment availability, and cargo claims data — broken down by quarter and by lane.
Hard-Copy Documents. A limited collection of hard-copy documents was retrieved from Raymond Hess's office files. These materials included handwritten notes, printed correspondence, and draft versions of the cure notice that were not available in electronic form. All hard-copy documents were scanned, OCR-processed, and ingested into the Pinnacle Forensics hosted review platform for inclusion in the review workflow.
D. Volume of Collected Data
The following table summarizes the volume of data collected across all sources:
The total raw data collected of approximately 78 GB represents a manageable but substantial data universe, reflecting the breadth of the Vantor/VTS relationship and the multi-year date range covered by the collection. The relatively high proportion of email data (approximately 79% of the total raw collection) is consistent with the nature of the dispute, which centers on communications and operational decisions made over a three-year period.
III. PROCESSING AND CULLING
A. Processing by Pinnacle Forensics
All collected data was transferred to Pinnacle Forensics LLC via secure encrypted upload to their hosted review environment. Data transfers were completed between September 12 and September 19, 2022, with Pinnacle confirming receipt and chain-of-custody documentation for each transfer batch. Nathan Billings provided written confirmation that all data was received intact and that SHA-1 hash values matched between the source and destination environments, ensuring data integrity throughout the transfer process.
Pinnacle processed the collected data using its standard forensic processing workflow, which includes the following components:
• De-NISTing: Removal of known system and application files using the National Institute of Standards and Technology ("NIST") National Software Reference Library ("NSRL") hash set. This step eliminates operating system files, application executables, and other non-user-generated files that have no evidentiary value, such as .exe files, .dll files, and other system-level artifacts.
• Deduplication: Global deduplication across all custodians based on MD5 hash values. Where identical copies of a document existed across multiple custodians' data sources, a single instance was retained for review, with metadata reflecting all custodians who possessed the document. This approach eliminates redundant review of the same document multiple times while preserving the full custodian attribution for production purposes.
• Date Filtering: Application of the agreed-upon date range of January 1, 2019 through September 1, 2022 to eliminate documents falling outside the relevant time period. Date filtering was applied based on the "Date Last Modified" field for loose files and the "Date Sent" field for email messages, consistent with industry best practices.
• Text and Metadata Extraction: Full text extraction for all document types, including OCR processing for image-based files (scanned documents, image-only PDFs). Metadata fields extracted include author, date created, date modified, date sent, date received, sender, recipients, subject line, file name, file path, file size, and custodian attribution.
• File Type Filtering: Exclusion of non-responsive file types that are inherently unlikely to contain substantive content, including executable files (.exe), dynamic link libraries (.dll), system configuration files, and other system-generated artifacts.
B. Culling Results
The processing and culling steps described above resulted in significant reductions to the data universe, as summarized below:
Email Data:
• Pre-deduplication: approximately 310,000 email items across six custodians
• Post-deduplication: approximately 82,000 unique email items
• Reduction: approximately 73.5%
The high deduplication rate for email is attributable to the significant overlap in communications among the six custodians, many of whom were routinely included on the same email chains regarding VTS-related matters. This is expected given the organizational structure of the Carrier Relations and Contract Compliance functions.
File Share and Database Documents:
• Pre-deduplication: approximately 24,000 documents
• Post-deduplication: approximately 12,200 unique items
• Reduction: approximately 49.2%
The lower deduplication rate for file share and database documents is consistent with the fact that these sources contain more heterogeneous content and fewer instances of the same document appearing across multiple custodian repositories.
Combined Post-Processing Universe:
• Total unique documents: approximately 94,200
• Total pages: approximately 186,000
Search Term Culling. Following deduplication and processing, a negotiated set of search terms was applied to the document universe to further prioritize documents for review. These search terms were agreed upon with Caldwell Royce & Shapiro LLP during meet-and-confer discussions held on October 14, 2022 and November 3, 2022. The search terms include the following categories:
• Entity and party names: "Vantor," "VTS," "Vantor Transport," "Vantor Holdings"
• Contract references: "TSA," "Transportation Services Agreement," "SLG-VTS-2019-0315"
• Termination-related terms: "cure notice," "termination," "breach," "default," "cure period"
• Operational terms: "fleet," "SLO," "service level," "on-time," "tender acceptance," "equipment availability," "cargo claim"
• Carrier-related terms: "Cascade," "Cascade Freight," "Briarwood," "Briarwood Trucking," "carrier diversion," "reallocation"
• Key custodian names: full names and email aliases for the six custodians and known Vantor/VTS counterparts
• Lane identifiers: "Lane 1" through "Lane 14," "Primary Lane," "Secondary Lane," "Schedule C"
• Financial and rate terms: "rate adjustment," "per-mile rate," "ACV," "annual contract value," "volume commitment," "minimum tender"
• Force majeure terms: "force majeure," "COVID," "pandemic," "suspension"
The full negotiated search term list, including all Boolean connectors and proximity operators, is set forth in Appendix B to this report.
Application of the negotiated search terms to the post-processing universe of 94,200 documents yielded a search term hit universe of approximately 68,400 documents — that is, approximately 68,400 of the 94,200 unique documents contained at least one search term hit and were therefore prioritized for review. The remaining approximately 25,800 documents that did not contain any search term hits were not excluded from the review universe entirely but were deprioritized, with the TAR 2.0 model (described in Section IV.B below) further assisting in the identification of any responsive documents within the non-hit population.
IV. DOCUMENT REVIEW
A. Review Methodology
The document review was conducted pursuant to a two-pass review protocol established in the Document Review Protocol Memorandum dated March 15, 2023, which was jointly prepared by David Moretti and Patrick Gallagher and approved by Samuel Eklund. The two-pass protocol is designed to ensure both efficiency and thoroughness by separating the initial responsiveness and privilege screening function from the substantive analysis and quality control function.
First-Pass Review. The first-pass review consisted of responsiveness and privilege screening. This review was conducted by contract associate Kara Nystrom and senior paralegal Helen Tsao, under the direct supervision of Simone Laroche, Working Associate. First-pass reviewers were instructed to make binary responsiveness determinations (Responsive / Not Responsive), identify documents that are potentially subject to attorney-client privilege or work product protection, and apply initial significance-level coding. First-pass reviewers received a detailed review instruction memorandum and participated in a training session conducted by Patrick Gallagher on March 17, 2023, which included a review of the key issues in the case, the relevant provisions of the TSA, and the coding taxonomy.
Second-Pass Review. The second-pass review consisted of substantive review and coding by Simone Laroche, Patrick Gallagher, and (on privilege questions) Samuel Eklund. Second-pass reviewers performed quality control checks on first-pass responsiveness determinations, confirmed or revised privilege designations, applied confidentiality designations under the anticipated protective order, and assigned final significance-level coding (Hot / Key / Routine). Second-pass review was particularly focused on documents flagged as potentially privileged during the first pass, ensuring that privilege calls were made at the attorney level with appropriate legal analysis.
Coding Taxonomy. The following coding fields were applied to all reviewed documents:
• Responsiveness: Responsive / Not Responsive
• Privilege: Attorney-Client Privilege / Work Product Doctrine / Joint Defense Privilege / Not Privileged
• Confidentiality: Confidential / Highly Confidential — Attorneys' Eyes Only / Not Designated (designations applied pursuant to the anticipated Stipulated Protective Order)
• Significance Level: Hot / Key / Routine (applied to responsive documents only)
• Issue Tags: Subject-matter tags corresponding to the key issues in the case (e.g., SLO Performance, Cure Notice, Termination, Carrier Diversion, Rate Adjustment, Force Majeure, Volume Commitment, Lane Structure, Damages)
B. Technology Assisted Review (TAR) 2.0
To maximize review efficiency and reduce the substantial manual review burden associated with a document universe of approximately 94,200 unique documents, a Technology Assisted Review ("TAR") 2.0 continuous active learning ("CAL") model was deployed on the Pinnacle Forensics hosted review platform. TAR 2.0 represents the current industry standard for technology-assisted document review and has been widely endorsed by courts, including in the Southern District of New York, as a defensible and proportionate approach to the review of large document populations in complex commercial litigation.
Seed Set and Model Training. The TAR 2.0 model was initialized with an initial training set (seed set) of 1,200 manually coded documents, comprising 600 documents coded as responsive and 600 documents coded as not responsive. The seed set documents were selected through a combination of random sampling and judgmental sampling to ensure that the training set was representative of the full spectrum of document types and subject matter within the review universe. The seed set coding was performed by Simone Laroche and Kara Nystrom and was subject to quality control review by Patrick Gallagher.
Continuous Active Learning. Consistent with the TAR 2.0 / CAL methodology, the model was iteratively updated as additional documents were manually coded during the first-pass review process. Each batch of newly coded documents was fed back into the model, allowing the algorithm to continuously refine its predictive rankings and improve its ability to distinguish between responsive and non-responsive documents. This iterative approach is the hallmark of TAR 2.0 and is generally recognized as superior to the earlier TAR 1.0 (simple passive learning) methodology in terms of both recall and efficiency.
Current Performance Metrics.
• Recall Rate: 91.3%. This figure is based on a statistical validation sample consisting of a random sample of 500 documents drawn from the set of documents that the TAR model predicted as "not responsive." This validation sample was independently reviewed by Simone Laroche, who determined that 43 of the 500 sampled documents were in fact responsive, yielding an estimated residual non-responsive rate within acceptable parameters. A 91.3% recall rate means that the model is correctly identifying approximately 91.3% of all responsive documents in the population, which is well within the range accepted by courts and industry authorities as sufficient for defensible use of TAR.
• Precision Rate: approximately 78.6%. The precision rate reflects the proportion of documents predicted by the model as responsive that are, upon manual review, actually determined to be responsive. A precision rate of 78.6% indicates a manageable level of over-inclusion — approximately 21.4% of documents flagged by the model as potentially responsive are ultimately determined to be non-responsive upon human review. This over-inclusion is addressed and corrected during the second-pass review process and does not result in the production of non-responsive documents.
Impact on Review Efficiency. The TAR 2.0 model significantly reduced the manual review burden for the case team. Based on the model's performance, approximately 35,000 documents were reliably classified as non-responsive with high confidence and did not require individual manual review. This allowed the review team to concentrate its manual review efforts on the approximately 59,200 documents requiring human assessment, representing a meaningful reduction in both time and cost compared to a linear manual review of the full 94,200-document universe.
C. Review Progress and Statistics (as of April 10, 2023)
The following table summarizes the current state of document review as of the date of this report:
The reconciliation between the responsive document count and the production count is as follows: 43,634 documents coded as responsive, minus 1,247 documents withheld on privilege grounds, equals 42,387 documents produced — a figure that reconciles precisely with the first production described in Section V.A below.
D. Privilege Review
A total of 1,247 documents were identified as privileged and withheld from production during the review process. The privilege designations are based on the following grounds:
Attorney-Client Privilege. The majority of the withheld documents are protected by the attorney-client privilege. These documents consist principally of two categories:
(a) Communications between Stonefield personnel and Ashford Meridian LLP ("Ashford Meridian"), the law firm that served as Stonefield's commercial and transactional counsel and was responsible for drafting the TSA. The Ashford Meridian communications include substantive legal advice regarding the interpretation of the TSA's provisions, Stonefield's contractual rights and obligations, and the legal implications of the cure and termination process. The primary Ashford Meridian attorneys involved in these communications were Lorraine Beckwith, Partner, and Troy Nakamura, Senior Associate.
(b) Communications between Stonefield personnel and Calderwood & Harkness LLP following the firm's engagement in September 2022. These post-engagement communications include all attorney-client communications related to the defense of this litigation.
Work Product Doctrine. A subset of the withheld documents is protected by the work product doctrine. These documents include internal legal analyses, litigation preparation materials, case strategy memoranda, and other documents prepared in anticipation of litigation by or at the direction of counsel.
Notable Privilege Category. Of particular significance, a category of 84 documents comprising pre-litigation communications between Stonefield personnel (principally Raymond Hess) and Ashford Meridian LLP (Lorraine Beckwith and Troy Nakamura) during the January through March 2022 cure and termination period was identified and analyzed. These communications, in which Stonefield personnel sought and received legal advice from Ashford Meridian regarding the interpretation of the TSA's cure provisions, the sufficiency of VTS's cure efforts, and Stonefield's termination rights under the agreement, were the subject of a detailed Privilege Review Memorandum dated March 22, 2023, prepared by Simone Laroche. The memorandum analyzed each of the 84 documents and concluded that all are properly protected as confidential attorney-client communications made for the purpose of seeking or providing legal advice regarding Stonefield's contractual rights. This memorandum has been circulated to Patrick Gallagher and Samuel Eklund for review and is maintained in the privileged work product file.
Privilege Log. A comprehensive privilege log was prepared by Simone Laroche and Helen Tsao to accompany the first production. Each of the 1,247 privilege log entries includes the following information: date of the document, author/sender, recipient(s), a general subject-matter description sufficient to allow opposing counsel to assess the privilege claim without revealing privileged content, and the specific privilege basis asserted (attorney-client privilege, work product doctrine, or both). The privilege log was delivered concurrently with the first production on April 14, 2023.
E. Clawback Protections
The parties entered into an FRE 502(d) stipulation providing that inadvertent production of privileged or protected documents does not constitute a waiver of any applicable privilege or protection. This stipulation was submitted to the Court and was entered as an order by the Honorable Margaret T. Calloway on February 17, 2023 as part of the Case Management Order. The 502(d) order provides a critical safety net in the event that any privileged documents are inadvertently included in a production, and is particularly important given the volume of documents processed and the use of technology-assisted review.
Notwithstanding the protections afforded by the 502(d) order, the case team has implemented robust quality control measures to minimize the risk of inadvertent privilege waiver:
• Second-pass privilege review: All documents coded as potentially privileged during the first-pass review are subject to a second-pass privilege review by Simone Laroche (and, on borderline questions, by Samuel Eklund at the partner level) before any final privilege determination is made.
• Pre-production privilege sweep: Prior to each production, a final automated privilege sweep is run against the production set to flag any documents that may have been inadvertently omitted from the privilege review queue.
• Partner-level review of borderline calls: All privilege determinations that present close questions — including documents in which privileged and non-privileged content are intermingled, documents involving dual-purpose communications, and documents in which the privilege claim rests on the characterization of the communication as legal advice rather than business advice — are escalated to Samuel Eklund for final determination.
V. PRODUCTION SUMMARY
A. First Production — Stonefield
The first production of documents by Stonefield to Vantor (through CRS) was completed on April 14, 2023. The key details of the production are as follows:
The production format was agreed upon with CRS during meet-and-confer discussions and provides documents in both native format (for electronically created documents such as spreadsheets and presentations where native format preserves functionality) and TIFF images with extracted text and metadata load files (for email and standard documents). This dual-format approach is consistent with the parties' obligations under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and reflects the standard production protocol in the Southern District of New York.
Access credentials to the production on the Pinnacle Forensics hosted review platform were provided to CRS to facilitate their review of the produced documents. The production was transmitted under a cover letter from Patrick Gallagher to Jason Whitford, Senior Associate at CRS, which identified the Bates range, confirmed the format, and referenced the accompanying privilege log.
Reconciliation. The production count of 42,387 documents reconciles precisely with the review coding results: 43,634 documents coded as responsive during review, minus 1,247 documents withheld on privilege grounds, yields 42,387 documents produced. No discrepancies exist between the review coding and the production set.
B. Privilege Log
The privilege log accompanying the first production contains 1,247 entries, each reflecting a document or communication withheld from production on the basis of attorney-client privilege, work product doctrine, or both. The privilege log was prepared by Simone Laroche and Helen Tsao and was delivered concurrently with the first production on April 14, 2023.
A supplemental privilege log is anticipated as additional review phases continue and as new documents are identified that require privilege analysis. Based on the trajectory of the review process, it is anticipated that additional privilege designations will be made as the case progresses through fact discovery. Ultimately, 218 additional privilege log entries were prepared and served on June 30, 2023; those supplemental entries will be addressed in a future eDiscovery status report.
VI. KEY / HOT DOCUMENT SUMMARY
During the document review process, a total of 6,842 documents were flagged with "Hot" or "Key" significance designations, indicating that these documents are of particular importance to the substantive defense of the case and require focused attorney analysis. These documents have been organized into the following topic categories:
VTS Performance / SLO Failures
Documents in this category reflect VTS's service level performance during the critical Q4 2021 period, which forms the basis for Stonefield's cure notice and termination. The Carrier Performance Portal data and associated internal analyses demonstrate the following performance metrics for VTS during Q4 2021, measured against the SLO thresholds established in the TSA:
The cargo claims data further reflects that VTS incurred 16 cargo claims totaling $387,400 during the November–December 2021 period alone, representing a material deterioration in claims performance relative to prior quarters. These documents are critical to establishing the factual predicate for Stonefield's termination of the TSA for cause.
Cure Notice and Termination
This category includes drafts and final versions of the key documents in the cure and termination sequence:
• The January 18, 2022 cure notice from Raymond Hess to Sandra Milescu (VTS Vice President, Account Management), setting forth VTS's SLO failures and demanding cure within the 60-day cure period provided under the TSA.
• Vantor's February 14, 2022 response from Derek Pruitt (VTS Senior Vice President, Operations) to Janet Kirkwood, contesting certain of the SLO calculations and asserting that VTS was taking corrective action.
• Tobias Wren's March 4, 2022 termination letter, formally terminating the TSA effective upon delivery, based on VTS's failure to cure the identified SLO deficiencies within the cure period.
• Internal drafts, redlines, and related communications reflecting the iterative development of each of these documents.
Internal Communications re Carrier Diversion
This category includes communications among Stonefield personnel regarding the reallocation of freight volume from VTS to alternative carriers, which is a central issue in Vantor's counterclaim. Of particular significance is Janet Kirkwood's September 22, 2021 email to Carlos Medina, in which she references the possibility of moving volume to Cascade Freight Systems Inc. and Briarwood Trucking Co. on Lanes 8–14, stating:
"If VTS doesn't get its act together by Q1 I think we pull the plug on the whole contract."
This document has been flagged as a risk document requiring careful handling. The language used by Ms. Kirkwood could be characterized by opposing counsel as reflecting a preexisting intent to terminate the VTS relationship independent of the SLO performance failures, potentially undermining Stonefield's position that the termination was a good-faith exercise of its contractual rights in response to VTS's material breach. This document should be analyzed in connection with deposition preparation for Ms. Kirkwood and in the context of any anticipated motion practice regarding Stonefield's termination rationale.
Rate Adjustment Analysis
Documents in this category relate to the annual rate adjustment mechanism under the TSA and include a February 2022 memorandum from Ashford Meridian LLP analyzing the projected April 2022 rate adjustment. The memorandum calculates that the weighted average per-mile rate under the TSA would increase from $2.87 to $3.28, representing a 14.3% increase, and projects that this adjustment would result in approximately $6.2 million in additional annual transportation costs for Stonefield. These documents are relevant to Vantor's claim that Stonefield terminated the TSA in part to avoid the rate increase, and will need to be addressed in connection with Stonefield's defense.
Force Majeure Invocation
This category includes documentation of Stonefield's invocation of the force majeure provision under TSA Section 12.1 in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. The force majeure invocation covered the period of April 2020 through September 2020 and resulted in a temporary suspension or modification of certain performance obligations under the TSA. These documents are relevant to the calculation of volume tender obligations and the adjusted Annual Contract Value ("ACV") during Contract Year 2.
Volume Tender Records
Documents reflecting actual volume tenders during the relevant contract years, including:
• Contract Year 2 (April 2020 – March 2021): actual tenders of $31.8 million against an adjusted ACV of $21.6 million (as adjusted post–force majeure invocation), reflecting that Stonefield's actual tenders substantially exceeded the adjusted contractual minimum.
• Contract Year 3 (partial: April 2021 – January 2022): actual tenders of $36.5 million through January 2022, the last month before termination.
These volume tender records are significant to the damages analysis and will be shared with the firm's retained experts at Kensington Analytics Group LLC for their review.
Schedule C / Lane Exclusivity
This category includes documents related to the 14 designated "Primary Lanes" set forth in Schedule C to the TSA, as well as carrier contracts and routing data for the alternative carriers — Cascade Freight Systems Inc. (Columbus, Ohio) and Briarwood Trucking Co. (Arlington, Virginia) — that Stonefield engaged for freight services on certain lanes. The documents reflect that Cascade and Briarwood usage was limited to Lanes 8–14, which are classified as "Secondary Lanes" under Schedule C and are subject to different exclusivity provisions than the Primary Lanes. These documents are central to Stonefield's defense against Vantor's claim that the use of alternative carriers constituted a breach of the TSA's exclusivity provisions.
Hot Document Index. A detailed indexed compilation of all 6,842 flagged documents, organized by topic category and cross-referenced to Bates numbers, custodians, dates, and issue tags, is currently being prepared by Kara Nystrom and Helen Tsao for delivery to the case team. The anticipated completion date for this index is mid-May 2023.
VII. VANTOR PRODUCTION — PRELIMINARY STATUS
Pursuant to the Case Management Order entered by Judge Calloway, Vantor is required to make its first document production on or before April 28, 2023. Based on meet-and-confer discussions with CRS and the Vantor production estimates provided in Vantor's initial disclosures, the production is expected to consist of approximately 28,914 documents comprising approximately 112,000 pages.
Pinnacle Forensics has been notified of the anticipated incoming production and is prepared to ingest and process the Vantor documents upon receipt. Nathan Billings has confirmed that Pinnacle's hosted review environment has sufficient capacity to accommodate the additional data volume and that the ingestion and processing workflow can be initiated within 48 hours of receipt.
The review protocol for the incoming Vantor production will follow the same two-pass methodology established for the Stonefield document review, as described in Section IV.A above. In addition, the TAR 2.0 model will be retrained on the Vantor document set to account for the different document types, vocabulary, and subject-matter characteristics that may be present in the opposing party's production. The retraining process will involve coding a new seed set of Vantor-produced documents and integrating those coding decisions into the model to optimize its performance on the incoming document population.
Key categories of documents anticipated in the Vantor production include:
• VTS internal communications regarding the Stonefield account and fleet management decisions during the relevant time period
• VTS financial records relating to revenue derived from the Stonefield relationship and mitigation efforts following termination of the TSA
• Mitigation documentation reflecting VTS's efforts to secure replacement business after the termination
• Internal VTS analyses of SLO performance and any corrective action plans prepared in response to Stonefield's cure notice
A separate analysis memorandum addressing the key findings from the initial review of the Vantor production will be prepared upon completion of the first-pass review. This memorandum was ultimately prepared by Simone Laroche and Kara Nystrom on May 12, 2023 and will be the subject of a separate reporting.
VIII. COST SUMMARY AND PROJECTIONS
A. eDiscovery Costs Incurred to Date
The following table summarizes Pinnacle Forensics costs incurred from the inception of the engagement through the reporting period (September 2022 – April 2023):
These Pinnacle Forensics costs are included within the approximately $620,000 in total costs and disbursements tracked for the matter through the reporting period. Internal review costs — comprising the time of Kara Nystrom (contract associate), Helen Tsao (senior paralegal), and Simone Laroche (working associate) dedicated to the eDiscovery review process — are billed within the firm's overall fee totals and are reflected in the quarterly billing summaries provided to Stonefield's General Counsel, Tobias Wren.
B. Projected Additional Costs
The following additional eDiscovery-related costs are anticipated as the matter progresses through the remaining fact discovery period:
Supplemental Stonefield Productions. Additional responsive documents and supplemental privilege log entries may be identified as the review continues and as additional discovery issues develop. The costs associated with any supplemental production formatting and delivery are expected to be incremental and within the scope of the existing hosting arrangement with Pinnacle Forensics.
Vantor Production Ingestion and Processing. The ingestion and processing of Vantor's anticipated production of approximately 28,914 documents (approximately 112,000 pages) is estimated to cost $15,000–$20,000 for processing services, with additional hosting fees continuing at the existing monthly rate of $18,200 per month to accommodate the expanded data volume.
Expert Document Sets. The assembly and delivery of curated document sets to the firm's retained testifying experts at Kensington Analytics Group LLC — Dr. Evelyn Rosser and Michael Chung — for their use in connection with damages rebuttal work is estimated to cost $5,000–$8,000. This estimate includes the cost of extracting, formatting, and delivering the relevant subsets of produced and received documents in a format suitable for expert review and analysis.
Potential Additional Productions. The Second Request for Production, which was served by Calderwood & Harkness on CRS on May 5, 2023, may yield additional supplemental production from Vantor requiring processing. The costs associated with any such supplemental production will be assessed upon receipt and reported in a subsequent status update.
IX. OUTSTANDING ITEMS AND ACTION ITEMS
The following action items are outstanding as of the date of this report and require attention from the identified responsible parties:
With respect to Action Item 7, it should be noted that the current TAR 2.0 recall rate of 91.3% is well within the thresholds accepted by courts in this district and nationally as sufficient for defensible use of technology-assisted review. Comprehensive validation documentation — including the statistical methodology employed, seed set composition, recall and precision calculations, and confidence intervals — is being maintained in Appendix C to this report and will be available for disclosure in the event that opposing counsel challenges the adequacy of Stonefield's review methodology.
X. APPENDICES (REFERENCED)
The following appendices are referenced in this report and are maintained as separate attachments to this memorandum:
Appendix A — Custodian List and Data Source Inventory. A table listing each of the six primary custodians, the data sources collected from each, the date ranges covered, and the volume statistics (raw data volume, pre-deduplication document counts, and post-deduplication document counts) for each custodian and data source.
Appendix B — Search Term List. The complete list of negotiated search terms applied during the culling phase, including all Boolean connectors, proximity operators, and wildcard specifications, as agreed upon with Caldwell Royce & Shapiro LLP during the October 14 and November 3, 2022 meet-and-confer sessions.
Appendix C — TAR 2.0 Validation Statistics. Detailed statistical methodology and supporting documentation for the TAR 2.0 model, including seed set composition, the iterative training process, the validation sampling methodology, recall and precision calculations, confidence intervals, and the statistical basis for the conclusion that the model's 91.3% recall rate satisfies industry and judicial standards for defensibility.
Appendix D — Pinnacle Forensics Invoicing Summary. An itemized cost breakdown by service category for all Pinnacle Forensics invoices received through the reporting period, reconciled to the summary figures set forth in Section VIII.A of this report.
Appendix E — Production Bates Range Index. A detailed index of the first production (SLG-000001 through SLG-042387), organized by custodian and date, identifying the Bates range segments attributable to each custodian's documents and each date range within the production.
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This document constitutes attorney work product prepared in anticipation of litigation and is protected from disclosure under the work product doctrine. The information contained herein is privileged and confidential and is intended solely for use by the members of the Calderwood & Harkness LLP engagement team assigned to Matter No. 1012-00005. Do not distribute this document outside the Calderwood & Harkness LLP engagement team without prior written authorization from Samuel Eklund, Responsible Partner.
Prepared by:
David Moretti Litigation Support / eDiscovery Manager Calderwood & Harkness LLP 200 Park Avenue, 38th Floor New York, NY 10166
Distribution: Patrick Gallagher, Lead Associate; Samuel Eklund, Responsible Partner — Calderwood & Harkness LLP (internal distribution only)
Custodian | Title | Relevance
Janet Kirkwood | VP, Carrier Relations | Primary relationship manager for VTS account; directed carrier diversification activities; central to Lanes 8–14 reallocation decisions
Raymond Hess | Director, Contract Compliance | Administered the TSA; drafted and issued the January 18, 2022 cure notice; communicated directly with Ashford Meridian LLP on termination rights
Carlos Medina | SVP, Operations | Supervised operational performance metrics; oversaw fleet and capacity management
Tobias Wren | General Counsel | Managed legal review of TSA termination and engaged outside counsel
Priya Ramachandran | CFO | Financial oversight of VTS relationship; internal cost-benefit analyses
Marcus Denton | CEO | Executive-level communications regarding VTS relationship; strategic decisions regarding carrier diversification
Data Source | Volume | Notes
Email (Exchange / O365) | ~62 GB | ~310,000 email items across 6 custodians (pre-deduplication and culling)
File shares and databases | ~14 GB | Carrier Relations and Contract Compliance shared drives; contract management database; TMS records; Carrier Performance Portal exports
Scanned hard copies | ~2 GB | Raymond Hess office files
Total | ~78 GB
Category | Document Count
Total documents in review universe | ~94,200
Documents manually reviewed (first pass completed) | ~59,200
Documents classified as non-responsive by TAR (high confidence, no manual review required) | ~35,000
Documents coded as responsive (manual review) | 43,634
Documents coded as not responsive (manual review) | 15,566
Documents coded as privileged (withheld from production) | 1,247
Documents flagged as "Hot" or "Key" for substantive attorney review | 6,842
Production Detail | Information
Production Date | April 14, 2023
Total Documents Produced | 42,387
Total Pages (approximate) | 186,000
Bates Range | SLG-000001 through SLG-042387
Production Format | Native format and TIFF images with extracted text and metadata load files
Production Platform | Pinnacle Forensics hosted review platform
Accompanying Privilege Log | 1,247 entries
Performance Metric | Q4 2021 Actual | TSA SLO Threshold | Variance
On-Time Pickup Rate | 78.2% | 95.0% | -16.8 pp
On-Time Delivery Rate | 81.6% | 93.0% | -11.4 pp
Tender Acceptance Rate | 71.4% | 90.0% | -18.6 pp
Equipment Availability | 62.0% | 85.0% | -23.0 pp
Cargo Claims Ratio | 1.07% | ≤0.50% | +0.57 pp
Service Category | Cost
Data processing (ingestion, de-NISTing, deduplication, extraction) | $42,500
Hosting fees ($18,200/month × ~7 months) | $127,400
Production formatting and delivery | $8,600
Total Pinnacle Forensics costs to date | $178,500
No. | Action Item | Responsible Party | Target Date
1 | Finalize first production: confirm Bates numbering and load files with Pinnacle Forensics before April 14 delivery | David Moretti (coordinating with Nathan Billings, Pinnacle) | April 13, 2023
2 | Privilege log QC: perform final quality check on all 1,247 privilege log entries before service | Helen Tsao & Simone Laroche | April 13, 2023
3 | Hot document index: complete indexed compilation of 6,842 flagged documents organized by topic for case team review | Kara Nystrom & Helen Tsao | Mid-May 2023
4 | Vantor production intake: prepare review workspace and TAR retraining plan for Vantor's anticipated April 28 production | David Moretti & Pinnacle Forensics | April 25, 2023
5 | Supplemental privilege review: monitor for additional privilege documents identified during second-phase review; prepare supplemental privilege log as needed | Simone Laroche | Ongoing (ultimately 218 additional entries logged June 30, 2023)
6 | Third-party subpoena productions: prepare intake workflow for anticipated productions from Cascade Freight Systems Inc. and Briarwood Trucking Co. pursuant to subpoenas duces tecum | David Moretti | TBD (subpoenas issued June 28, 2023)
7 | TAR validation reporting: maintain ongoing TAR 2.0 model validation documentation for potential disclosure to opposing counsel or court if challenged | David Moretti & Simone Laroche | Ongoing