December 1, 2011 – Page 20 – Electronic Discovery Law

McNulty v. Reddy Ice Holdings, Inc., 2011 116892 (E.D. Mich. Jan. 13, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where defendant preserved 4 terabytes of electronically stored information and 744 boxes of paper documents to be reviewed for production, court cited Rule 26(b)(2)(B) for the proposition that burdensome discovery should be limited but found that plaintiff had good cause for requesting relevant information and ordered the parties to meet and confer to develop search terms or objective search criteria for identifying responsive ESI as well as to develop a search plan for the hard copy

Nature of Case: RICO

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, hard copy

Essenter v. Cumberland Farms, Inc., 2011 WL 124505 (N.D.N.Y. Jan. 14, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where a store employee attempted to copy the relevant surveillance footage but was unsuccessful and where the failure was not discovered until after the tape had been overwritten, the court found defendant?s loss of the relevant footage was negligent and imposed an adverse inference that the lost footage would have been unfavorable to the defendant

Nature of Case: Slip and fall

Electronic Data Involved: Video

United States v. Gravely, 2011 WL 112468 (E.D. Ky. Jan. 13, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Bureau of Prison?s failure to preserve video footage of hallway outside cell in which the alleged murder of an inmate occurred did not violate the defendant?s constitutional rights where the defendant failed to establish that the footage was materially exculpatory and where the court found the failure to preserve was grossly negligent but not in bad faith

Nature of Case: Defendant charged with murdering another inmate

Electronic Data Involved: Video

Dubler v. Hangsterfer?s Labs., 2011 90244 (D.N.J. Jan. 11, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where defendant produced privileged emails and sought to preclude waiver arising therefrom, the court rejected defendant?s assertions that it did not intend to waive privilege and, noting the lack of evidence regarding reasonable steps to prevent disclosure and that defendant had not yet requested the return of the documents at issue, found that privilege had been waived

Nature of Case: Employement litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged emails

Silverman v. United States, 2011 WL 65487 (M.D.N.C. Jan. 7, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where pursuant to defendant?s document retention policy the form at issue was subject to retention until February 4, 2007, and where defendant provided notice of his claims on February 1, 2007, including his assertions of defendant?s negligence, court found destruction of the relevant form warranted an adverse inference establishing that defendant negligently loaded the trailer involved in the underlying accident

Nature of Case: Negligence

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Makeen v. Comcast of Colo. X, LLC, 2011 WL 93728 (D. Colo. Jan. 11, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Court denied motion for sanctions for defendant?s loss of server logs where the court determined that the logs were of minimal relevance to plaintiff?s claims and where the logs ?rolled over? in the usual course of business prior to the trigger of defendant?s duty to preserve

Nature of Case: Violation of FMLA and ADA, employment discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress

Electronic Data Involved: Server logs

Archive - December 1, 2011