Key Insight: Court declined to allow recovery for ?electronic discovery vendor fees? because they are ?outside the scope of Section 1920? (28 U.S.C. 1920)
Nature of Case: Copyright infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Taxable Costs
Key Insight: Where the parties agreed to a Joint Discovery Plan requiring production in PDF unless metadata was requested and that in such cases the parties should meet and confer to discuss the format of production in good faith and where Defendant made such a request and sought to confer but was ignored, court ordered Plaintiff to re-produce emails with associated metadata at its own expense
Electronic Data Involved: Emails and metadata
Key Insight: Costs generically described as ?discovery services? and broken down as ?Active Hosting,? ?Nearline Hosting,? and ?User Access Fee? were denied where the generic descriptions were insufficient to meet the standard for specificity in the Ninth Circuit and where the descriptions failed to indicate that the fees were incurred for making copies
Electronic Data Involved: ESI (Taxable costs under 1920(4))
Key Insight: Circuit court did not abuse its discretion in admitting screen shots from Defendant?s ex-boyfriend?s Facebook account where the appellate court determined that Defendant?s admission that she was ?Meka Rochelle? – the at-issue commenter shown in the screen shots – and admissions that she authored one of the comments and that she was the person depicted in the photos ?sufficiently tie[d] her to the comments and the photos? and that Defendant?s claim that she did not recall making the comments went to weight , not admissibility
Electronic Data Involved: Social Media (Facebook)
Key Insight: Court of Appeals of Kansas found no abuse of discretion by the district court for failing to order sanctions related to the recycling of the laptop computer used by appellant during his employment, as the district court did not issue an order to preserve and there is no statutory or common-law duty to preserve evidence in Kansas; court further found no abuse of discretion by the district court for excluding evidence of recycling the computer; court also found that a chat log was relevant, material, and probative and the appellant was protected from prejudice because the district court only allowed the redacted version of the chat log into evidence.
Nature of Case: Employment
Electronic Data Involved: Laptop; Chat Log
Key Insight: Upon Defendant?s motion to compel production of all of Plaintiff?s Facebook materials, the court found ?nothing improper? in Plaintiff?s redaction of irrelevant information from her prior Facebook production, distinguishing the present case from Largent v. Reed, 2011 WL 5632688 (Pa. Ct. Com. Pl. Nov. 8, 2011) in which the court compelled production of Plaintiff?s username and password, and reasoned, in part, that Plaintiff had already provided Facebook information relevant to the case and that Defendant failed to show that further production would result in more relevant information or that Plaintiff?s counsel?s assessment of relevance was questionable
Nature of Case: Claims related to harm to pet from jerky treats
Electronic Data Involved: Facebook (Social Media)
Key Insight: Court found that Google Earth satellite image was not hearsay because it makes no assertion and also found that ?[a] tack placed by the Google Earth program and automatically labeled with GPS coordinates isn?t? hearsay? because the ?relevant assertion isn?t made by a person? its made by the Google Earth program? and therefore, there is no statement as defined by the hearsay rule (where the rule applies ?only to out-of-court statements? and where ?it defines a statement as ?a person?s oral assertion, written assertion, or nonverbal conduct?); however, ?[i]f the tack is place d manually and then labeled . . . its classic hearsay?
Nature of Case: Illegal re-entry into the U.S.A.
Electronic Data Involved: Google Earth image and tack
Key Insight: Failure to preserve emails after defaulting to regular document retention policies based on mistaken belief that Plaintiff had not appealed the dismissal of her case was ?at least negligent,? but court continued motion subject to renoting when discovery was complete to allow for an evaluation of prejudice
Nature of Case: Employment litigation
Electronic Data Involved: Emails
Key Insight: In this case, the court ordered preservation, including “interdiction of any document-destruction programs . . .” and defendant alleged that preservation of all contents of a proprietary publication application could slow down or crash the system and that installation of a new storage system would cost $18 million dollars and could take up to eight months to install. Accordingly, the defendant sought permission to employ an alternative preservation protocol, namely the use of key word search terms to identify materials to be preserved in a ?searchable environment not subject to auto-delete.? With the addition of one search term to be employed, the court approved Defendant?s proposal.
Nature of Case: Putative personal injury class action involving claims against numerous defendants for alleged sexual violence during World War II
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
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: Copyright infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Computer hard drive
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