Archive - November 2006

Reino de Espana v. Am. Bureau of Shipping, 2006 WL 3208579 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 3, 2006)

This litigation arose from the casualty of the Prestige off the coast of Spain in November 2002, which caused a large oil spill. In this opinion, the court granted defendant ABS’s motion to compel the production of email and other electronic records prepared by various governmental agencies that were involved in the response to and investigation of the spill. In addition, the court invited ABS to seek sanctions for Spain’s apparent failure to preserve relevant evidence.
Read More

MacNamara v. City of New York, 2006 WL 3298911 (S.D.N.Y. Nov 13, 2006)

This case is one of many arising from the arrests of approximately 1,800 people during the Republican National Convention (“RNC”) in New York City in the summer of 2004. This decision addressed plaintiffs’ motion to compel the city to produce certain documents and electronically stored information. Among other rulings, the court granted plaintiffs’ request for production of certain arrest worksheets used in connection with the city’s Online Booking System ("OLBS"). The OLBS worksheets contained handwritten information regarding the arresting or assigned officer’s recollection of the events that preceded the arrest. The information on the worksheet is subsequently entered into the OLBS, often by someone other than the officer who filled out the worksheet. The city argued that the plaintiffs’ request for OLBS worksheets for non-party arrestees was duplicative, since the information sought could be found in database printouts the city had already agreed to produce. However, plaintiffs contended that “significant errors, edits and omissions” occur at the data entry stage, and that the information contained in the handwritten worksheets sought may therefore differ from that in the database printouts, which contained only the information actually entered into the OLBS. The court found that an example cited by plaintiffs supported their contention, and ordered production of the worksheets subject to an "attorneys’-eyes-only" designation.

Ruling on a separate request, the court sustained the city’s objection to plaintiffs’ request for "[a]ll electronic data concerning RNC arrests" maintained by various entities, finding it to be impermissibly vague.

Johnson v. Kraft Foods N. Am., Inc., 2006 WL 3302684 (D. Kan. Nov. 14, 2006)

In this decision, the court granted in part plaintiffs’ motion to compel and overruled a number of defendants’ objections to plaintiffs’ request for production. Among other things, defendants had objected that many of the terms used in the request were vague and ambiguous, including: “electronic databases,” “personnel related data,” “database,” “coded fields,” and “data dictionaries.” Overruling the objection, the court noted that plaintiffs had attempted to resolve any ambiguity by providing definitions in a separate letter. It also noted that, while the court’s electronic discovery guidelines did not specifically provide definitions for the terms in dispute by the parties, the guidelines did provide a valuable reference to the Sedona Conference® for definitions of terms used in the guidelines. It concluded:
Read More

Ball v. Versar, Inc., 2005 WL 4881102 (S.D. Ind. Sept. 23, 2005)

This case involved the remediation of a “Superfund” hazardous waste site in Indiana. Plaintiffs Roy Ball and Norman Bernstein (the “trustees”) were trustees for the fund formed by the hazardous waste generators to clean up the site under agreement with the relevant governmental agencies. The trustees sued Versar, Inc. for breach of its contract to perform remediation services at the site. In this motion, the defendant sought production of email and other documents it contended the trustees were improperly withholding, access to plaintiff Roy Ball’s personal and employer-owned computers, and sanctions for plaintiffs’ failure to produce or retain discoverable electronic evidence. Read More

Optowave Co., Ltd. v. Nikitin, 2006 WL 3231422 (M.D. Fla. Nov. 7, 2006)

In this breach of contract case, Optowave contended that its contract with defendant Dmitri Nikitin d/b/a Precision Technology Group (“PTG”) incorporated eight certain specifications, and that PTG failed to meet any of the specifications, thereby breaching the contract. During discovery, Optowave sought to compel production of electronic documents and emails regarding the contract. Following oral argument and the parties’ agreement on certain issues raised by the motion to compel, the court scheduled a second hearing on the issue of spoliation of certain internal emails between Nikitin and his employees. Read More