Archive - November 6, 2006

Wyeth v. Impax Labs., Inc., 2006 WL 3091331 (D. Del. Oct. 26, 2006)

In this patent litigation, the court denied in part and granted in part defendant’s motion to compel. Impax contended, among other things, that Wyeth should be ordered to produce electronic documents in their native format, complete with metadata, and not in the Tagged Image File Format (“TIFF”) in which they were produced. Wyeth argued that Impax was not entitled to electronic copies in their natural state for two reasons: (1) Impax had not made a particularized showing of need for the metadata, and (2) collection of this data would be overly burdensome. Read More

Bank of America Corp. v. SR Int’l Bus. Ins. Co., Ltd., 2006 WL 3093174, 2006 NCBC 15 (N.C. Super. Nov. 1, 2006)

In its introductory remarks, the court advised:

This opinion should be read in conjunction with the opinion in Analog Devices, Inc. v. Michalski, 2006 NCBC 14, (N.C.Super.Ct. Nov. 1, 2006), issued contemporaneously herewith. The decision in that case deals with production of inaccessible data in the context of a party-to-party dispute and provides greater detail concerning approaches used by various courts in e-discovery disputes. Both this opinion and the opinion in Analog should make it clear that: (1) the language of current North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure 26 and 45 still control trial court decisions and work well, (2) each case is different and fact intensive, (3) there exist numerous factors which might come into play in the varying factual contexts of each case, and (4) trial courts should always be cognizant that e-discovery decisions, especially those involving inaccessible data, have the potential to be outcome determinative because of the costs involved.

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