Executive Air Taxi Corp. v. City of Bismarck, 2008 WL 564725 (8th Cir. Mar. 4, 2008)

Key Insight: Eighth Circuit upheld district court’s order denying plaintiff’s request to have a third-party expert conduct forensic investigation of a City-owned computer to search for relevant emails that might not have been produced in discovery; district court’s findings that City had produced all relevant emails in hard copy and that forensic discovery could expose confidential or privileged materials were not clearly erroneous and in light of that factual premise there was no abuse of discretion

Nature of Case: Equal protection and substantive due process claims

Electronic Data Involved: Laptop computer of defendant’s employee