In September 2015, Volkswagen publicly admitted that its diesel vehicles carried software written to detect emissions testing and change engine behavior during it — the "defeat device." The admission covered roughly 11 million vehicles worldwide, and litigation followed at matching scale: within months, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated the U.S. cases into In re: Volkswagen "Clean Diesel" Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2672, before Judge Charles R. Breyer in the Northern District of California (Case No. 3:15-md-02672, filed December 2015).
The headline settlements came fast — a 2.0-liter consumer program valued at up to $14.7 billion was approved in October 2016 — but the MDL did not end there. Dealer, investor, and opt-out claims kept the docket, and its discovery program, running for years.
Why it was difficult
The case was, at bottom, about software: what a few million lines of engine-control code actually did, who wrote it, and who knew. The evidence answering those questions lived in engineering systems, version-control records, test data, and corporate communications spread across German and American entities — in two languages, under two legal systems, with cross-border data-protection constraints sitting on top of ordinary discovery fights about custodians, search, and privilege.
Discovery of that kind cannot be evaluated by litigation instinct alone. Whether a preservation effort was adequate, whether a collection reached the systems that mattered, whether a production was complete — each is a technical question about how specific systems store and surrender data, asked at a scale few dockets ever reach.
The firm's role
A Law & Forensics principal, Daniel B. Garrie, served as an eDiscovery expert in the MDL. The firm's published record cites the engagement as: Volkswagen "Clean Diesel," MDL, N.D. Cal., Case No. 15-MD-2672-CRB (JSC). (2018) — one of the named, docket-cited matters in the firm's record of court and arbitral engagements.
The firm publishes the engagement and its docket citation; it does not publish matter details beyond that record.
Evidence and method
The working method the firm brings to eDiscovery expert engagements is the same regardless of the caption: treat every discovery question as a systems question first. An opinion about the adequacy of a preservation effort starts from what the source systems actually retain; an opinion about search methodology starts from how the data is structured and what the tools can honestly be said to have tested. The opinion is then written the way testifying-expert work has to be written — with its basis, its data, and its limits on the page.
In an MDL of this size, that discipline is not optional. Every expert assertion is made in front of some of the most heavily resourced litigation teams in the country, on a docket the whole profession is watching.
Impact
The underlying MDL resolved through a series of settlements publicly reported to be among the largest in consumer-litigation history, beginning with the $14.7 billion 2.0-liter program. The firm does not claim credit for outcomes it did not produce. What the record shows is narrower and, for a client evaluating the firm, more useful: when the defining automotive MDL of its decade needed eDiscovery expertise, a Law & Forensics principal held a named role in it.
The expert dimension
Expert work in federal court is built for two specific tests: a Rule 702 / Daubert challenge to the expert's methodology before the opinion is ever heard, and cross-examination if it is. In a matter of this profile, both tests arrive with unusual force — opposing counsel with effectively unlimited resources, and technical facts (engine-control software, engineering data systems) on which a vague or borrowed opinion collapses quickly. That is the standard the firm's eDiscovery expert work is written to: methodology stated, basis shown, every conclusion traceable to something a cross-examiner can check.
Related capabilities
eDiscovery Services · Expert Witness Services · Court & Arbitral Appointments · Daniel B. Garrie
