September 2020 – Electronic Discovery Law

Charlestown Capital Advisors, LLC v. Acero Junction, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 30, 2020)

Sep 30 2020

Key Insight: Sanctions against Defendants were warranted. Defendants had a duty to preserve relevant ESI at the time of their deletion which occurred a year into the litigation. Defendants failed to take reasonable steps to preserve relevant ESI. Defendants failed to suspend their routine document retention/destruction policy, Defendants’ counsel failed to oversee or play a role in preserving or attempting to reconstruct relevant ESI until 5 months after their deletion, and Defendants’ restoration attempts were inadequate.

Nature of Case: Breach of Contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Case Summary

Carrington v Graden, (S.D.N.Y. 2020)

Sep 28 2020

Key Insight: Plaintiff was discovered to have fabricated emails. Court awarded over $500,000 in damages to Defendant.

Nature of Case: antitrust litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Keywords: sanctions,m fabricated evidence

View Case Opinion

Oracle USA, Inc. v. Rimini Street, Inc. et al. (D. Nev. 2020)

Sep 25 2020

Key Insight: Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel based on Defendant’s (categorical) objections and assertion of attorney-client privilege over (software) source code in responding to discovery requests; Plaintiff specifically cited Defendant’s failure to provide an itemized privilege log for its objections. Defendant filed a Motion to seal the redacted information that it provided to Plaintiff despite the privilege objections.

The Court upheld Defendant’s objections, noting that objection(s) need not be in the form of a privilege log. Moreover, the Court granted the Defendant’s Motion to Seal the redacted information that it provided to Plaintiff despite its objections.

Nature of Case: Intellectual Property, Copyright Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Source Code

Case Summary

Livingston v. City of Chicago (Northern District of Illinois, 2020)

Sep 03 2020

Key Insight: A responding party is best suited to determine the method of review and using TAR to pre-cull documents from review is an acceptable methodology

Nature of Case: Hiring discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Keywords: Chicago, fire department, technology assisted review, TAR

View Case Opinion

Archive - September 2020