Archive - June 2006

Warner Bros. Records, Inc. v. Souther, 2006 WL 1549689 (W.D.N.C. June 1, 2006)

In this case, plaintiffs sued for copyright infringement, contending that defendant unlawfully downloaded and distributed copyrighted materials through the use of a peer-to-peer, online media distribution system. Defendant denied the allegations and further denied giving anyone permission to use the computer to conduct the activities complained of. Discovery disputes ensued, and plaintiffs filed motions to extend the discovery deadline and to compel full and complete answers to interrogatories. Read More

Morgan v. U.S. Xpress, Inc., 2006 WL 1548029 (M.D. Ga. June 2, 2006)

This case involves a motor vehicle accident about which plaintiffs and defendant offered entirely different theories. Plaintiffs alleged that the accident occurred when a U.S. Xpress tractor-trailer pulled out from the shoulder of the road and turned sharply in front of Wes Morgan’s semi-oil tanker, forcing Mr. Morgan to veer to the right shoulder of the road to avoid hitting the truck and, in the process, lose control. Defendant alleged that the accident was a single-vehicle accident involving only Mr. Morgan, pointing to the results of a police investigation, which found no physical evidence of a second vehicle, and no eyewitnesses to the accident. Read More

Kingsway Fin. Servs., Inc. v. Pricewaterhouse-Coopers LLP, 2006 WL 1520227 (S.D.N.Y. June 1, 2006) and Kingsway Fin. Servs., Inc. v. Pricewaterhouse-Coopers LLP, 2006 WL 1295409 (S.D.N.Y. May 10, 2006)

In these two opinions, the magistrate denied motions to compel plaintiff to produce document retention notices that it had issued regarding the litigation. Plaintiff resisted on privilege grounds, and the moving parties argued that any privilege had been waived by plaintiff’s failure to list the document retention notices on its privilege log.

The court determined that the plaintiff’s document retention (or “litigation hold”) notices were relevant: “Like a party’s destruction of relevant documents, if plaintiff’s document retention notices are patently deficient or inadequate in some other respect, they might support a negative inference concerning the merits of plaintiff’s claims.”

However, since neither of the two notices were in existence at the time plaintiff’s response to the requests for production was due, the court found that plaintiff’s failure to list them on a privilege log did not waive any privilege that applied.

Ayers v. SGS Control Servs., 2006 WL 1519609 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 3, 2006) In a previous ruling, summarized here, the court ordered defendants to produce spreadsheets containing mathematical calculations regarding the payroll and timekeeping data. See Ayers v. SGS Control Servs., 2006 WL 618786 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 9, 2006), and Ayers v. SGS Control Servs., 2006 WL 859362 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 3, 2006) (denying defendants’ requests for reconsideration). In addition, the court had previously ordered plaintiffs to produce their damage calculations. In order to do these calculations, however, plaintiffs needed raw payroll and timekeeping data from defendants. Read More