Archive - September 24, 2007

Benton v. Dlorah, Inc., 2007 WL 2225946 (D. Kan. Aug. 1, 2007)

In this employment discrimination case, defendants moved to compel plaintiff to provide complete responses to requests for production, to produce the hard drive of her personal computer for inspection and copying, and to stop destroying emails and other relevant evidence.  Defendants had requested all communications between plaintiff and defendant National American University or its employees, agents, or students.  Plaintiff produced some documents as part of her initial disclosures and in response to defendants’ discovery requests.  In subsequent discussions regarding the sufficiency of plaintiff’s production, plaintiff’s counsel informed defense counsel that plaintiff had deleted email correspondence with her students and could not produce any additional emails beyond what she had already provided in her initial disclosures.  Prompted by concerns about recovering these emails, as well as the discovery responses, defendants requested that she produce the hard drive of her personal home computer to facilitate recovery of the deleted emails by a computer forensics specialist.  Plaintiff refused to produce her computer hard drive without an order of the court.  After further efforts to resolve the discovery dispute, defendants filed a motion to compel.

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Auto Club Family Ins. Co. v Ahner, 2007 WL 2480322 (E.D. La., Aug. 29, 2007)

Non-parties Rimkus Consulting Group, Inc. and Rimkus Consulting Group, Inc. (collectively "Rimkus") filed a motion to quash the subpoena duces tecum served on them by defendants Christopher and Jennifer Ahner (“the Ahners”), and for a protective order.  Rimkus had, on behalf of plaintiff Auto Club Family Insurance Company, investigated the hurricane-related damage to the Ahners’ home that was the subject of the lawsuit.  Rimkus agreed to respond to the subpoena by producing a hard copy of its entire file concerning its investigation, but argued that it should not be required to produce its electronically stored information.

The court noted that Rules 26(c) and 45 governed the proceeding, and that, having sought a protective order, Rimkus had a burden to make “’a particular and specific demonstration of fact as distinguished from stereotyped and conclusory statements,’ in support of its motion.”  Considering each of Rimkus’s arguments in turn, the court denied the motion to quash the subpoena. Read More