Key Insight: Appellate court affirmed sanction of dismissal of plaintiffs? claims for spoliation where plaintiff was found to have undertaken ?knowing and willful? spoliation of ?pertinent? evidence resulting in prejudice to the defendant by destroying relevant hard drives
Nature of Case: Legal Malpractice
Electronic Data Involved: ESI, hard drives
Key Insight: Where willful, bad faith spoliation of relevant video tapes despite a duty to preserve (triggered by an internal complaint of harassment and receipt of two preservation requests from plaintiff) resulted in prejudice to the plaintiff, court ordered sanctions, including an adverse inference allowing (but not requiring) the jury to infer that certain tapes would have been harmful to defendant, an order precluding defendant from the introduction of certain evidence, and a prohibition on cross examination of plaintiff?s witnesses as to certain topics
Nature of Case: Racial discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Video
Key Insight: The court denied defendant’s Motion for Reconsideration of the court?s order allowing forensic examination of the at issue hard drive by a neutral forensic examiner where defendant failed to meet the standard for reconsideration
Electronic Data Involved: Mirror image of hard drive
Key Insight: Providing a detailed explanation of defendant?s and counsel?s discovery abuses, including failing to search for internal emails, ignoring plaintiff?s subpoena, and counsel?s offering of ?evasive and unfounded testimony in an effort to rationalize his inexcusable non-production? of certain relevant (and repeatedly requested) documents, among other things, the court denied defendant?s motion for reconsideration and upheld as a sanction the establishment of a particular fact in plaintiff?s favor, namely that Lighthouse did not establish an escrow account in accord with its obligations under its agreement with plaintiffs
Nature of Case: Adversary proceeding in bankruptcy
Electronic Data Involved: Emails, bank statements
Key Insight: In ongoing case addressing plaintiff?s claims of wrongful death resulting from their son?s release from the hospital and subsequent suicide, the court denied defendant?s motion to compel inspection of parents? personal home computer where parents alleged their son?s use of the computer was limited, where plaintiffs made significant efforts to assist in the retrieval of potentially relevant ESI from third parties including AOL, Facebook, and MySpace, where the requested inspection was unlimited by scope of data range, and where there was only speculation as to the existence of relevant evidence; court?s analysis included consideration of newly adopted revisions to Connecticut Practice Book
Nature of Case: Wrongful death
Electronic Data Involved: Personal computer
Key Insight: Court found that relevant social media content was discoverable but declined to compel plaintiff to produce her login and password or her entire Facebook history (using the ?Download your own information? feature) and ordered plaintiff?s counsel to review plaintiff?s social media content for a period beginning in 2005 to identify information relevant to the categories identified by the court
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination, failure to accomodate
Electronic Data Involved: Social media content
Key Insight: Court denied motion to compel forensic imaging of laptop containing responsive information where plaintiff did not elaborate on the ?need? for such imaging but rather just asked for it, where defendant offered to produce the relevant information from the laptop on a thumb drive, and where defendant indicated that the laptop contained both confidential and personal information
Key Insight: Providing significant analysis of the issue of spoliation, court denied plaintiff?s motion for sanctions for defendant?s alleged failure to adequately preserve evidence where government?s investigation did not trigger a duty to preserve evidence as to the class action plaintiffs in this case and thus, no duty to preserve existed for purposes of the spoliation analysis; court also found that even where duty to preserve existed, plaintiffs also failed to establish prejudice resulting from the alleged failure to preserve and that defendant acted in bad faith by failing to prevent the loss of ESI pursuant to defendant?s usual document retention policies and the automatic functions of its server
Nature of Case: Class action related to alleged collusion in implementation baggage fees
Electronic Data Involved: Emails, ESI
Key Insight: Court found no waiver of privilege where the email at issue was inadvertently produced (as the result of plaintiff?s access to defendants? servers); where defendants took sufficiently reasonable steps to prevent disclosure as evidenced by the parties? ?repeated discussions about key word limitations? and ?broad protective order? and because ?Defendants repeatedly and specifically emphasized their concern over how Plaintiff was handling any attorney-client communications it came across?; and where defendants acted promptly to rectify the problem upon receiving notice of the inadvertent production. Accordingly, court granted defendant?s motion to strike plaintiff?s motion for sanctions which relied on the privileged email but left open plaintiff?s opportunity to re-file upon removing all reference to the privileged message
Nature of Case: Litigation arising from death of inmate while incarcerated
Electronic Data Involved: Litigation hold spreadsheet, privileged email
Key Insight: Conviction reversed and case remanded where trial court abused its discretion by admitting text messages found on the defendant?s cell phone without providing any evidence to establish that the defendant was the author of the at-issue messages, particularly where several messages referred to the defendant in the third person and ?and thus, were clearly not written by her?; court also found the text messages constituted inadmissible hearsay
Nature of Case: Drug conviction
Electronic Data Involved: Text messages
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