Pillay v. Millard Refrigerated Servs., Inc., No. 09 C 5725, 2013 WL 2251727 (N.D. Ill. May 22, 2013)
In this case, the court granted Plaintiff’s motion for an adverse inference instruction where Defendant failed to prevent the automatic deletion of relevant data despite notice of impending litigation and receipt of a specific preservation notice, sent directly to Defendant’s general counsel.
The U.S. International Trade Commission has adopted “final rules related to its e-discovery practices.” “The new rules will be effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register and are applicable to investigations instituted 30 days after publication in the Federal Register”—a Federal Register notice was issued on May 15, 2013.
The newly adopted rules address issues including the discovery of inaccessible information and limitations to discovery similar to those found in Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C). The newly adopted rules also add new provisions addressing privileged information and work product, including requiring the production of privilege logs and providing procedures for addressing the inadvertent production of privileged materials.
SK Hynix, Inc. v. Rambus, Inc., No. C-00-20905 RMW, 2013 WL 1915865 (N.D. Cal. May 8, 2013)
In this ongoing patent infringement action, a major question has been whether Rambus’s destruction of documents constituted spoliation and, if so, what sanctions should be imposed. Different courts considering the same facts (but involving different plaintiffs) came to different conclusions. Upon its initial consideration of the question, the district court in the Northern District of California determined that “Rambus had not spoliated documents” and that there was “no factual basis for an unclean hands defense” as asserted by SK hynix. (See summary here.) A jury subsequently returned verdicts in favor of Rambus and the court therefore “entered final judgment of infringement with respect to ten Rambus patent claims” and awarded judgment of “$349,035,842 after a remittitur plus prejudgment interest, and required SK hynix to pay specified royalties to Rambus on an ongoing basis.” A district court in the District of Delaware (in a case involving Plaintiff Micron Technology, Inc.) disagreed, however, and found that sanctions were warranted for Rambus’s spoliation of documents. (See summary here.) The court therefore declared the patents in suit unenforceable against the plaintiff in that case.
EORHB, Inc. v. HOA Holdings, LLC, No. 7409-VCL, 2013 WL 1960621 (Del. Ch. May 6, 2013)
Previously, the court ordered the parties to “retain a single discovery vendor to be used by both sides” and to “conduct document review with the assistance of predictive coding.” (See summary, here.) On May 6, the court entered a new order, stating that Defendants could retain their chosen vendor and utilize computer assisted review but that the parties would not be required to retain a single vendor to be used by both sides and that “Plaintiffs may conduct document review using traditional review methods.”
“Learn how to Bring Agility and Clarity to the Management of your eDiscovery Process”
May 21-22, 2013
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Country Vintner of North Carolina, LLC v. E & J Gallo Winery, Inc., —F. 3d.—, 2013 WL 1789728 (4th Cir. Apr. 29, 2013)
In this case, the Fourth Circuit clarified “what expenses related to electronically stored information (“ESI”) are taxable under the federal taxation-of-costs statute as ‘[f]ees for exemplification and the costs of making copies of any materials where the copies are necessarily obtained for use in the case’” and affirmed the district court’s order “taxing only the costs of converting electronic files to non-editable formats, and transferring files onto CDs.”
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