Case Summaries – Page 116 – Electronic Discovery Law

Advantor Sys. Corp. v. DRS Technical Servs., Inc., No. 6:14-cv-533-Orl-31DAB, 2015 WL 403308 (M.D. Fla. Jan. 28, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: The Magistrate Judge denied Advantor?s motion for sanctions against DRS for intentional bad faith spoliation of evidence, finding that sanctions were not warranted because there was no showing that the destroyed evidence was critical to litigate the case issues. DRS had a duty to preserve the contents of a laptop that was used by an employee who was hired away from Advantor and subsequently fired by DRS after receiving notice from Advantor that litigation was reasonably anticipated. Despite having a duty to preserve the contents of the laptop, DRS reformatted the laptop and erased files that were potentially proprietary to Advantor and in violation of their Nondisclosure Agreement. However, Advantor failed to show that the files contained relevant information critical to the case or that DRS was aware the files were on the laptop. Despite the unexplained reformatting of the laptop, sanctions were not granted.

Nature of Case: Employment

Electronic Data Involved: Hard Drive

Spilker v. Medtronic Inc., No. 4:13-CV-76-H, 2014 WL 1643258 (E.D.N.C. Apr. 13, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where ?Defendants provided Plaintiff with fully searchable documents, sortable by metadata fields, in a folder structure organized by custodian,? the court found this was ?sufficient to satisfy the requirements for document production of ESI under Rule 34? and declined to compel Defendants to provide an index

Nature of Case: Claims arising from death during medical procedure

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Ballard v. Williams, No. 3:10-cv-01456, 2015 WL 179071 (M.D. Pa. Jan. 14, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where surveillance footage of hallway in which alleged assault occurred was overwritten, the court reasoned there was no indication that the evidence was intentionally lost or destroyed, that the named defendants were not responsible for the video system, and that defendant was not ?materially prejudiced? because he could still testify as to what happened and therefore denied the motion for sanctions

Nature of Case: Alleged assault by prison officers and related claims

Electronic Data Involved: Surveillance video

Bloom v. Toliver, No. 12-CV-169-JED-FHM, 2015 WL 5344360 (N.D. Okla. Sept. 14, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where prisoner alleged that he was attacked by another inmate and that corrections officers failed to properly respond, court found prison had a duty to preserve relevant surveillance footage and the recording of the involved-officer?s phone call to his wife immediately following the incident and that the failure to do so resulted in prejudice; court ordered evidentiary sanctions for the loss of certain footage, but reserved a determination re: sanctions as to lost video of the aftermath of the attack and the officer?s phone call

Nature of Case: Civil rights

Electronic Data Involved: Video surveillance footage and call recording

AJ Holding Grp. v. IP Holdings, 129 A.D.3d 504 (N.Y. App. Div. 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court denied motion for sanctions where plaintiff?s failure to preserve emails, and its failure to implement any uniform or centralized plan to preserve data or the various devices used by the key players in the transaction, demonstrated gross negligence which gave rise to a rebuttable presumption that the spoliated documents were relevant, but plaintiff rebutted the presumption by demonstrating that the defenses available to defendant all necessarily turned on communications to or with them, not plaintiff?s internal communications.

Nature of Case: Breach of Contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Dekeyser v. Thyssenkrupp Waupaca Inc., No. 08-c-0488, 2015 WL 10937559 (E.D. Wis. Apr. 10, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where Defendant initially produced material safety data sheets in TIFF format and later in hard copy but Plaintiff complained they were ?extremely difficult? to utilize because of the number of duplicates, the ?absence of organization? and the small font size (despite having relied upon the productions for purposes of summary judgment), court was swayed by Plaintiff?s expert?s articulation regarding the lack of burden rather than Defendant?s vague attestations of the burden of reproduction and, reasoning that Plaintiff had not produced all of the information requested in its initial production (e.g., certain data fields from the database in which the material safety data sheets were maintained) and that the prior productions were in a form that degraded searchability, ordered reproduction of the requested information i.e., ?all data and information maintained in [Defendant?s] databases relating to the MSDS and all data inputted by [Defendant] concerning the same, in an electronic, organized and usable format.?

Nature of Case: FLSA

Electronic Data Involved: Contents of database

CSP Techs, Inc. v. Sud-Chemie AG, No. 4:11-cv-0029-RLY-WGH, 2015 WL 2405528 (S.D. Ind. May 20, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court found Defendants were entitled to costs, including costs related to scanning, OCR bates labeling, and TIFF/PDF conversion but not costs associated with document collection, password recovery, searching, data hosting/electronic storage services and the fee for an e-discovery specialist

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs

Lutzeier v. Citigroup Inc., No. 4:14-cv-00183-RLW, 2015 WL 430196 (E.D. Mo. Feb 2, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Addressing Plaintiff?s motion to add custodians, the court granted the motion, in part, but declined to compel the addition of high-level executives absent a showing that they had ?unique or personal knowledge of the subject matter that warrants their information?; Court found that the current ?search criteria adequately ensure[d]? the production of relevant documents and declined Plaintiff?s request for additional search terms except the phrase ?consent order? where confusion existed as to the existence of ?other? consent orders relevant to the case; where plaintiff was unsatisfied with Defendant?s production of more than 46,000 documents ?without providing any indication as to which documents are responsive to which of Plaintiff?s fifty-eight (58 ) enumerated requests,? but where the defendant represented that their production was ?fully text-searchable and contain[s] metadata permitting Plaintiff to identify, among other things, the custodians of the document, recipients, date and other key information,? the court found that the production was ?in a reasonably useable form or forms and/or the production is searchable, sortable and paired with relevant metadata? and thus was compliant with the parties? ESI agreement and with Rule 34

Nature of Case: Wrongful discharge; Age Discrimination; Dodd Frank; Sarbanes-Oxley

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Artt v. Orange Lake Country Club Realty, Inc., No. 6:14-cv-956-Orl-40TBS, 2015 WL 4911086 (M.D. Fla. Aug. 17, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: In FLSA case seeking compensation for ?off the clock? work, court found that defendant?s request for any social media activity posted between 7AM and 7PM on any date between June 19, 2011 and Plaintiff?s termination was ?on its face overbroad, unduly burdensome and unreasonable?

Nature of Case: FLSA

Electronic Data Involved: Social media

Henry v. Abbott Labs., No. 2:12-cv-841, 2015 WL 5729344 (S.D. Ohio Sept. 30, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Despite duty to preserve personnel records created by regulation (29 CFR ? 1602.14), court found no ?regulatory violation? in the destruction of documents subject to preservation until a ?final disposition? of the action where documents were destroyed following Plaintiff?s failure to appeal the dismissal of her case; court also found that even if Defendant had an ongoing duty to preserve (because the case was eventually reinstated upon Plaintiff?s motion for relief from the dismissal), there was no evidence of requisite culpability where Defendant reasonably believed (as did the court) that the case had been ?finally adjudicated;? the court also questioned the relevance of the at-issue documents

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: ESI: personnel evaluations, surveys related to promotion

Catagory:Case Summaries