What happened
Three hangars at the Dulles Jet Center in Loudoun County, Virginia, collapsed in a snowstorm in February 2010, and the lawsuits were consolidated in the county's circuit court. Other parties objected when the Landow defendants proposed predictive coding for their electronic files. In their memorandum, the defendants estimated that linear review of more than two million documents would take 20,000 hours and cost two million dollars. They claimed that predictive coding could find upwards of seventy-five percent of the potentially relevant documents at a fraction of the cost. On 23 April 2012 Judge James H. Chamblin ordered that the defendants be allowed to proceed with predictive coding. Handwritten terms in the order allowed 60 days for processing and up to 60 more for production. A receiving party could still raise the completeness of the production or the ongoing use of predictive coding with the court. Counsel for one plaintiff signed the order as seen and objected to. The order gives no reasons and no finding on cost or accuracy, and the review had not run.
Sources
-
Court document, by authors with no tie to the system.
Circuit Court for Loudoun County, Virginia (Judge James H. Chamblin). Global Aerospace Inc., et al. v. Landow Aviation, L.P. d/b/a Dulles Jet Center, et al., Consolidated Case No. CL 61040, Order Approving the Use of Predictive Coding for Discovery, entered 23 April 2012. Copy of the signed order on the eDiscovery Law blog of K&L Gates.
Having heard argument with regard to the Motion of Landow Aviation Limited Partnership, Landow Aviation I, Inc., and Landow & Company Builders, Inc., pursuant to Virginia Rules of Supreme Court 4:1(b) and (c) and 4:15, it is hereby ordered Defendants shall be allowed to proceed with the use of predictive coding for purposes of the processing and production of electronically
-
Other, by the organization that used it.
Landow Aviation Limited Partnership, Landow Aviation I, Inc. and Landow & Company Builders, Inc. Memorandum in Support of Motion for Protective Order Approving the Use of Predictive Coding, Circuit Court for Loudoun County, Consolidated Case No. CL 61040, served 9 April 2012. Copy on the eDiscovery Law blog of K&L Gates.
Predictive coding, on the other hand, is capable of locating upwards of seventy-five percent of the potentially relevant documents and can be effectively implemented at a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time of linear review and keyword searching.
Details
AI system
- Workflow
-
The defendants held an estimated 250 gigabytes of reviewable electronic files. An attorney codes training documents until the tool stabilizes, and the tool then applies its model to the collection. The defendants offered to give opposing counsel the training documents, apart from privileged documents and sensitive irrelevant ones.
Follow-up
- Conditions for replication
-
Processing finishes within 60 days, and production follows within a further 60 days. A receiving party can still raise the completeness of the production with the court. The coding goes on until the recall measured on samples reaches at least 75%.
Entry details
- Sector
-
Legal services / e-discovery.
- Purpose
-
A vendor that the order does not name built the predictive coding tool to separate relevant from irrelevant documents, with a model trained on an attorney's coding.
31 more questions not yet checked
model, release, provider, role, configuration, inputs and outputs, autonomy, human oversight, AI contribution, beneficiaries, reach, distribution and access, duration, every measurement question, every money question, ownership and control, dependencies, cross-border connections, geopolitical implications, replication attempts, availability, institutional decision, grounds, action and result, success criterion, every evidence question, observed or intended, alternative assessments, related entries, other identifiers, category mappings.
Cite this record
Peter H. Vartanian. (2026). Virginia court lets defendants use predictive coding over objections (AIBD-0988). Artificial Intelligence Benefits Database, edition of 1 November 2026. https://petervartanian.xyz/aibd/records/AIBD-0988.html (archived at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AADSII, version 7.0)