Archive - December 2004

Trigon Ins. Co. v. United States, 204 F.R.D. 277 (E.D. Va. 2001)

In taxpayer suit, government retained a litigation consultant (“AGE”) and a number of testifying experts. (One testifying expert was an owner of AGE; and all of the testifying experts coordinated their work through AGE.) During discovery proceedings on the defendant’s Daubert motion, it became apparent that a substantial amount of potential evidence had been destroyed. Many of the draft reports and communications among the testifying experts and AGE had been deleted as a result of AGE’s document retention policy and the individual practices of the testifying experts. Read More

McPeek v. Ashcroft, 202 F.R.D. 31 (D.D.C. 2001)

In employment discrimination suit, plaintiff requested that the Department of Justice search its computer backup system for evidence of retaliation. The court stated that there was no controlling authority for the proposition that restoring all backup tapes is necessary in every case. It observed: Read More

GTFM, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, 2000 WL 1693615 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 9, 2000)

At a conference with the court, defense counsel made inaccurate representations about defendant’s computer system capabilities, stating there was no way to cull certain data. About a year later, plaintiffs deposed a vice-president in the defendant’s MIS department and discovered that the defendant’s computers were, in fact, capable of providing the information sought by plaintiffs. Read More

Danis v. USN Communications, Inc., 2000 WL 1694325, 53 Fed.R.Serv.3d 828 (N.D. Ill. 2000)

After a protracted discovery dispute in which the parties collectively spent over $1.5 million litigating the issue of sanctions, the court determined that the defendants had failed to take adequate steps to preserve potentially relevant documents. Read More

Simon Prop. Group L.P. v. mySimon, Inc., 194 F.R.D. 639 (S.D. Ind. 2000)

Although the factual record on plaintiff’s motion to compel was “extremely sparse,” the court found that plaintiff had shown “some troubling discrepancies with respect to defendant’s document production.” 194 F.R.D. at 641. The court ruled that the plaintiff was entitled to attempt – at its own expense – the task of recovering deleted computer files from computers used by four key players, whether at home or at work. Id. Read More

In re Gen. Instrument Corp. Sec. Litig., 1999 WL 1072507 (N.D.Ill. Nov. 18, 1999)

Court denied plaintiffs’ motion to compel production of email from backup tapes, despite also finding that restoration of tapes could be done without undue expense. Read More

Playboy Ent., Inc. v. Welles, 60 F.Supp.2d 1050 (S.D. Cal. 1999)

After a third party produced email communications between itself and defendant, plaintiff followed up with defense counsel to inquire why the emails had not been produced by defendant. During the meet and confer discussions, plaintiff learned that defendant had a custom and practice of deleting emails shortly after she sent or received them, regardless of their content. Plaintiff sought access to defendant’s hard drive for the purpose of recovering emails that may be relevant to the litigation. Read More

Adobe Sys., Inc. v. South Sun Prods., Inc., 187 F.R.D. 636 (S.D. Cal. 1999)

Software makers sued for copyright infringement, alleging that the defendant had purchased single copies of certain software packages and installed software on multiple computers. On the same day the complaint was filed, plaintiffs sought an ex parte preservation order, arguing that the defendant could easily remove evidence of infringement by deleting software from its computers. Read More

Linnen v. A.H. Robbins Co., 1999 WL 462015 (Mass. Super. June 16, 1999)

Plaintiffs moved to compel the production of email restored from defendant’s backup tapes. The estimated cost of restoration of the tapes and retrieval of responsive email ranged between $300,000 to over $1.4 million. Read More

N.Y. Nat’l Org. for Women v. Cuomo, 1998 WL 395320 (S.D.N.Y. July 14, 1998)

Potentially relevant material was lost when, at the end of the Cuomo administration, computer databases containing letters and reports sent to the governor, outgoing letters, internal memoranda, monthly summary reports and electronic mail, along with information saved by individual employees on personal computers, were deleted. Read More