On February 3, 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York affirmed a magistrate judge’s decision requiring preservation of a massive amount of electronically stored information (ESI) in a putative class action. The decision was a setback for WLF, which filed a brief urging that the decision be overturned. WLF argued that the costs of complying with the preservation order are so large that it essentially will require the defendant to enter into a settlement agreement as a less-expensive alternative to complying with the order. WLF asserted that putative members of a class action should not be deemed “key players” whose every scrap of information must be preserved once suit is filed, and that the magistrate failed to apply the “proportionality test” – comparing the costs of discovery with the potential value of the lawsuit. The district court disagreed, ruling that KPMG must retain all ESI until its potential value can be more accurately ascertained.