Case Summaries – Page 108 – Electronic Discovery Law

Split Cove, Inc. v. Trek Bicycle Corp., No. 12-cv-639-wmc, 2015 WL 9593630 (W.D. Wis. Dec. 31, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Following discussion of prior decisions in the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 9th and federal circuit courts, the District Court adopted ?the [Third Circuit?s] Race Tires approach, with the caveat that the costs of copying metadata and hard drives be included for reasons stated well [by the Federal Circuit and the Sixth Circuit] in CBT Flint and Colosi? and reduced the award of costs related to e-Discovery ?to include only costs for Bates stamping, shipping and delivery of electronic documents, native file and email conversions, and TIFF image creation and conversion?

Nature of Case: Patent Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs of e-Discovery

Lanteri v. Credit Protection Assoc. LP, No. 1:13-cv-1501-WTL-DKL, 2015 WL 6607494 (S.D. Ind. Apr. 3, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court denied motion for protective order where Defendant?s ?general assertions of hardship and burden? re: the at-issue search were insufficient to justify a protective order, and explained that they had ?offered no affidavits or evidence of any kind to substantiate the general assertion of ?disruption? to their business? and had not ?shown with specificity that the proposed search would cause and undue burden and is thus improper?

Nature of Case: TCPA, FCPA

Electronic Data Involved: Allegedly burdensome search of ESI

Hespe v. City of Chicago, No. 13 C 7998, 2016 WL 7240754 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 15, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where a magistrate judge found the requested inspection of Plaintiff?s devices was not proportional to the needs of the case ?especially? in light of Plaintiff?s privacy and confidentiality interests despite the production of thousands of text messages by Plaintiffs? mother (which Plaintiff confirmed she had sent to her for safekeeping) and alleged inconsistent testimony from the Plaintiff, the District Court Judge overruling Defendants? objections acknowledged the need for caution in allowing such inspections (including by citing the 2006 Advisory Committee Notes to Fed. R. Civ. P. 34) absent evidence of a responding party?s failure as to its discovery obligations or a ?substantiated connection? between the at-issue device and the claims of the case and concluded that neither had been established in the present case

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, text messages

Bumpers v. Austal, U.S.A. LLC, No. 08-00155-KD-N, 2015 WL 6870122 (S.D. Ala. Nov. 6, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where Defendant sought to recover for emails and other ESI compiled by Plaintiff?s expert as ?copying costs? (specifically, Defendant sought ?recovery to produce emails as part of discovery and to obtain already compiled electronic data to support its Daubert motion to exclude Dr. Bradley?s testimony, characterizing them as ?digital copies? necessarily obtained for use in the case?), court reasoned that the costs did not ?relate to a deposition transcript or a true ?digital copy,?? that ?creating an electronic database/compilation or enhanced digital files ?goes well beyond the statutory intent? for taxable digital copies,? and that Defendant had not explained how the data was ?necessarily obtained for use in the case rather than the convenience of counsel? and denied the request

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs

S.E.C. v. Blackburn, No. 15-2451-CJB-SS, 2015 WL 10911438 (E.D. La. Oct. 26, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: No waiver of privilege resulting from inadvertent production (as a result of legal assistant?s accidental attachment of the wrong email folder when preparing initial disclosures) where steps to prevent disclosure were reasonable, including custodian?s specific identification of privileged material and trial attorney?s review of all non-privileged docs to be produced and where trial attorney immediately addressed inadvertent disclosure upon her discovery of it and return to her office

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Bruno?s v. Bozzuto?s, No. 3:09-CV-00874, 2015 WL 1862990 (M.D. Pa. Apr. 23, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where plaintiffs intentionally destroyed all paper and electronic copies of relevant financial information despite a duty to preserve citing the burden of storage, the court found that the destruction was in bad faith, but that the prejudice was minimal where other sources of evidence provided sufficient information to support Defendant?s defenses and thus ordered an adverse inference at trial; where one plaintiff was a Certified Public Accountant, court considered her professional capacity when considering the willfulness of the destruction, noting that it ?strains credulity? that an accountant would throw away all financial documents because of ?storage space?

Nature of Case: Breach of Contract

Electronic Data Involved: ESI (financial data)

LBI, Inc. v. Sparks, No. KNLCV126018984S, 2015 WL 6144112 (Conn. Super. Ct. Sept. 18, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where Defendant sought to avoid production or allocate costs related to the production of allegedly inaccessible information based on the alleged cost and burdens related to processing and review but acknowledged that some of the ?raw data associated with the documents? was accessible, the court concluded that the affidavit from an attorney for the defendant?s counsel who had not ?attested to having a technical understanding of, or background in, electronically stored data? was not by itself ?enough evidence? to demonstrate that the at-issue ESI was not reasonably accessible and ordered defendant to submit additional evidence re: whether the information was stored in a ?readily usable format?

Nature of Case: Breach of contract, breach of duty of loyalty, misappropriation of trade secrets and tortious interference with a business relationship

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

A.M.castle & Co. v. Byrne, No. H-13-2960, 2015 WL 4756928 (S.D. Tex. Aug. 12, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where Plaintiff sought ?physical access? to Defendant?s electronic devices based on the belief that Plaintiff failed to perform a thorough search, the court overruled objections to denial of the motion where Plaintiff failed to show that Defendant was in possession of any of Plaintiff?s company documents and where Defendant responded adequately to discovery, including hiring an outside party to perform forensic examination of the computers and utilizing hundreds of search terms proposed by the plaintiff

Nature of Case: Breach of employee confidentiality agreement, breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, tortious interference with contract, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, and civil conspiracy

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Adesanya v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., No. 2:13-CV-5564-SDW-SCM, 2015 WL 6122080 (D.N.J. Oct. 16, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court granted motion to compel production of computer used by Plaintiff for her work with Defendant?s competitor upon concluding that its likely contents would ?arguably be relevant to claims that Plaintiff unethically competed with her employer? among other things, and ordered Plaintiff to produce the computer as it had been stored in the ordinary course of business and that the computer be provided to a third-party vendor for imaging and then returned to Plaintiff

Nature of Case: Wrongful termination, “claims that Plaintiff unethically competed with her employer”

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Loop AI Labs Inc. v. Gatti, 2015 WL 1090180 (N.D.Cal. Mar. 12, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff?s motion for temporary restraining order which requested restrictions on defendant?s assets, and orders prohibiting destruction of evidence, expediting discovery, allowing plaintiff access to defendant?s email and social media accounts, and for the return of a laptop because the court found plaintiff failed to demonstrate it was likely to suffer irreparable harm absent injunctive relief. In asserting it would suffer irreparable harm, plaintiff argued defendant had demonstrated she would not observe her obligation to preserve evidence, but provided no evidence in support of this claim. Stating that ?suspicions are not a proper ground for injunctive relief,? the Court noted that counsel for each defendant were ?expected to advise their clients of their duty to preserve potentially relevant evidence and the serious consequences for failing to do so,? but denied further relief.

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of Trade Secrets; Breach of Contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email, social media, laptop

Catagory:Case Summaries