Archive - August 2017

Mirmina v. Genpact LLC, No. 3:16CV00614, 2017 WL 3189027 (D. Conn. July 27, 2017)

In this case, Plaintiff sought to compel Defendant to conduct an additional search for ESI.  Plaintiff asserted that he was “concerned” that responsive communications were withheld from production and argued “in essence, that defendant’s search for ESI was insufficient because counsel relied upon an employee directly involved in the underlying claims of the suit to search her own emails for responsive documents.” Defendant opposed the motion and argued that Plaintiff’s concerns were “unfounded because the search for responsive records was coordinated and overseen by counsel.”  In support of that position, Defendant’s in-house counsel provided an affidavit outlining the approach:

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Irth Sols. LLC v. Windstream Commc’ns LLC, No. 2:16-CV-219, 2017 WL 3276021 (S.D. Ohio Aug. 2, 2017)

In this case, despite the existence of a clawback agreement (not an order) indicating that “[i]nadvertent production of privileged documents does not operate as a waiver of that privilege,” the court found that privilege was waived by the inadvertent but “completely reckless” production of privileged materials … twice. In so concluding, the court rejected the notion that a clawback agreement always protects against waiver, regardless of its terms, and instead indicated its support for courts that have precluded protection from a clawback agreement when the disclosure was “completely reckless” and for a framework that allows a court to rely on Fed. R. Evid. 502(b) when a clawback agreement fails to provide sufficiently concrete terms.

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