Catagory:Case Summaries

Living Color Enters., Inc. v. New Era Aquaculture, Ltd., No. 14-cv-62216-MARRA/MATHEWMAN, 2016 WL 1105297 (S.D. Fla. Mar. 22, 2016)

In this case, text messages were deleted when Defendant failed to turn off the automatic delete function on his cellular phone. Because “the great majority” of the messages were produced from another source—and thus not lost—however, and where the court determined there was no prejudice or evidence of Defendant’s “intent to deprive” or bad faith, Plaintiff’s Motion for Sanctions was denied.

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Best Payphones, Inc. v. City of New York, Nos. 1-CV-3924 (JG) (VMS), 1-CV-8506 (JG) (VMS), 3-CV-0192 (JG) (VMS); 2016 WL 792396 (E.D.N.Y. Feb. 26, 2016)

In this case, the court addressed Defendants’ motion for sanctions for Plaintiff’s failure to preserve hard copy documents and electronically stored information and therefore conducted simultaneous but separate analyses of the alleged spoliation under the common law (tangible items/hard copy) and recently-amended Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e) (ESI). Ultimately, the court determined that Plaintiff was negligent in its failure to preserve relevant information but that the lack of prejudice precluded imposition of the serious sanctions requested.  Instead, Plaintiff was ordered to pay Defendants’ attorneys’ fees and costs related to the motion.

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In re Takata Airbag Prods. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 2599 (S.D. Fla. Mar. 1, 2016)

In this opinion, the District Court considered Defendants’ proposal to redact or withhold certain irrelevant information from responsive documents and document families. In approving the proposal, the court cited Chief Justice John Roberts’ recent comments that recently amended Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 “crystalizes the concept of reasonable limits on discovery through increased reliance on the common-sense concept of proportionality.” Reasoning that such comments “highlight” that “a party is not entitled to receive every piece of relevant information,” the court concluded that “it [was] only logical” that “a party is similarly not entitled to received every piece of irrelevant information in responsive documents if the producing party has a persuasive reason for why such information should be withheld.”

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Pyrrho Investments Ltd v MWB Property Ltd [2016] EWHC 256 (Ch)

On February 2, 2016 an English court approved the use of predictive coding for the first time. Thereafter, it issued an opinion explaining the reasons for approval, relying in part upon the well-known Da Silva Moore case, which was the first to approve the use of predictive coding in American litigation.

Following extensive discussion of the issue, including acknowledging the parties’ agreement to utilize predictive coding in this case, the court laid out the factors it considered in favor of approving the use of predictive coding, noting “there were no factors of any weight pointing in the opposite direction”:

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