Yesterday, Special Master Collins J. Seitz, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware found in this report that counsel for DaimlerChrysler did not intentionally or in bad faith withhold relevant documents from production to plaintiffs, concluding a document production saga (previously discussed here), that had brought a halt to the multi-billion dollar trial involving Tracinda Corp. and DaimlerChrysler.

The Court's findings concerning the reasons why certain documents were produced late to plaintiffs are detailed, carefully following the documents from the office of former CFO Gary Valade through multiple copying jobs and vendors, document reviews, and cities. The short version is that the Special Master concluded that (a) Skadden Arps did nothing improper and, to the contrary, appeared to do everything it could and should have done in the production process; (b) somehow, two different copy vendors in different cities independently failed to copy some or all of "Box 363," which contained the notes; and (c) Skadden's creation of an "Inviolate Set" of all documents received from witnesses was enormously helpful in the Court's effort to recreate what occurred.