Key Insight: Where there were gaps in plaintiff’s production of email, administrative law judge granted motion to compel production of email from plaintiff’s backup tapes but ordered parties to share the costs of such production
Nature of Case: Case before the U.S. International Trade Commission
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Court ordered AOL to reveal the identities of its anonymous subscribers who had transmitted offensive emails and instant messages where plaintiff had established that: (1) she had a prima facie basis for asserting criminal or civil liability against the anonymous authors; (2) the identifying information was relevant to her claims and necessary to obtain redress; (3) she was seeking the information in good faith and not for an improper purpose; and (4) she was unable to obtain the identifying information by alternative means
Nature of Case: Individual sued ISP seeking disclosure of identities of subscribers who sent her offensive email and instant messages
Electronic Data Involved: Identities of subscribers
Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff’s motion to compel defendants to provide affidavits of all employees with access to employment databases and hiring practices, in order to establish whether any documents or data was destroyed, since discovery had been closed for one year and there was no evidence that defendants had destroyed documents
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Hiring and employment database and records
Key Insight: Where defendants had taken steps to remedy alleged gaps in production by producing new spreadsheets and time remained to remedy any further deficiencies prior to the discovery cut-off, extreme sanction of default judgment was unwarranted
Nature of Case: Breach of contract
Electronic Data Involved: Emails and spreadsheets of sales data
Key Insight: Trial court properly imposed terminating sanctions against plaintiff for egregious discovery abuses, including the deletion of files from hard drives after plaintiff had stipulated that computers and diskettes would not be operated or touched until defendants’ computer expert could examine them
Nature of Case: Breach of contract
Electronic Data Involved: Hard drive, computer files
Key Insight: Finding representative parts/assumptions sanctions imposed by magistrate to be moderate, fair, and narrowly tailored to redress defendant’s discovery violations, district court upheld sanctions with slight modifications
Nature of Case: Patent infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Schematics, completion reports, netlists and other technical documents
Key Insight: Finding defendant’s actions went “far beyond mere negligence, demonstrating knowing and intentional conduct that led to the nonproduction of all technical e-mails,” district court affirmed the spoliation inference jury instruction and monetary sanctions imposed by magistrate
Nature of Case: Patent infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Following additional briefing by parties on attorneys’ fees and adverse inference instruction, magistrate awarded plaintiff $563,843 in fees and $2,998 in costs for its counsel’s efforts on sanctions motion and to secure discovery and crafted jury instruction based upon that adopted in Zubulake V
Nature of Case: Patent infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Magistrate granted various discovery sanctions requested by plaintiff, including monetary sanctions and a jury instruction adverse to defendants based on destruction and non-production of email
Nature of Case: Patent infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Where statute specifically imposed a duty on defendants to preserve evidence, and defendants represented they had complied and will comply with the statute, and plaintiffs adduced no evidence of non-compliance, court declined to enter an order mandating the preservation of evidence
Nature of Case: Securities fraud class action
Electronic Data Involved: All relevant documents, data compilations and tangible things
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