Case Summaries – Page 125 – Electronic Discovery Law

United States v. Simpson, No. 12-10574, 2014 WL 148654 (5th Cir. Jan. 15, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Appellate court upheld conviction for obstruction of justice based on deletion of email, where defendant admitted deleting email in response to being told about the execution of search warrants at a co-conspirator’s home and office, and there was evidence that defendant did more than simply delete emails but had also tampered with the drive from which the emails had been deleted

Nature of Case: Criminal case involving wire and mail fraud conspiracy and obstruction of justice convictions

Electronic Data Involved: Deleted email

Pettit v. Smith, No. CV-11-02139-PHX-DGC, 2014 WL 4425779 (D. Ariz. Sep. 9, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Granting in part plaintiff’s motion for spoliation sanctions, court ruled that under the special circumstances of the case and notwithstanding that it was not a party to the litigation, Arizona Department of Corrections had duty to preserve the missing evidence, its failure to do so was at least grossly negligent, evidence was plainly relevant and plaintiff was clearly prejudiced by its loss; court declined to impose case-terminating sanctions against individual defendants but would allow parties to present evidence and argument about the lost evidence and would instruct jury that ADC had a duty to preserve evidence, ADC did not preserve the evidence, and jurors may infer that lost evidence would have been favorable to plaintiff

Nature of Case: Inmate alleged correctional officers used excessive force

Electronic Data Involved: Videotape of event, photograph of plaintiff’s hand, and other documentary evidence

In re Indeco Sales, Inc., No. 09-14-00405-CV, 2014 WL 5490943 (Tex. App. Oct. 30, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Ruling on petition for writ of mandamus, state appellate court found that trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendants’ motion to compel: (1) production of plaintiff’s cell phone for forensic examination and data extraction (to retrieve stored and deleted photographs and videotapes depicting plaintiff subsequent to accident, stored and deleted text messages, emails and audio recordings referencing or reflecting plaintiff’s alleged depression, etc.) and (2) production of information, data, posts and conversations from plaintiff’s Facebook page, because the requests were not properly limited in time and scope, were overly broad and could have been more narrowly tailored, and constituted an unwarranted intrusion

Nature of Case: Personal injury claims stemming from motor vehicle accident

Electronic Data Involved: Data stored on plaintiff’s cell phone; and information, data, posts and conversations from plaintiff’s Facebook page

Moore v. Weinstein Co., LLC, No. 3:09-CV-00166, 2014 WL 4206205 (M.D. Tenn. Aug. 25, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court followed prevailing view, adopted by the Third and Fourth Circuits, that Section 1920(4) has an exceedingly narrow scope as it relates to electronic production, and tasks and associated costs of electronic discovery other than file conversion – including “preserving, processing, searching, culling and extracting ESI” – do not amount to “making copies” under the statute; court evaluated expenses charged by defendants’ counsel’s in-house electronic discovery team and defendants’ outside e-discovery vendor, disallowing various e-discovery costs and applying a 90% across-the-board reduction to account for excluded tasks and vagueness in the billing entries submitted by defendants

Nature of Case: Musician sued producers and distributors of movie and its accompanying soundtrack for trademark infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI; costs associated with electronic discovery

A & R Body Specialty & Collision Works, Inc. v. Progressive Cas. Ins. Co., No. 3:07CV929 (WWE), 2014 WL 5859024 (D. Conn. Nov. 10, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Magistrate judge granted plaintiffs? motion for reconsideration, but adhered to its previous ruling denying plaintiffs? request that defendant merge two separate data compilations from two distinct data sources – one from a non-party and the other from defendant – to enable plaintiffs? experts to have a single ?pristine? data set to use in the case, as plaintiffs were not entitled to receive ESI in their preferred format nor were defendants required to create a document for production; however, because it struck the court that it would be in both parties? interests to have the data plaintiffs sought and for both parties? experts to work from the same data set, the court suggested that the parties cooperate in hiring a neutral third party to conduct the comparison, which would provide plaintiffs, to some extent, the data sought while at the same time prevent an attack on the data?s integrity

Nature of Case: Class action brought by auto body companies alleging that defendants violated the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act

Electronic Data Involved: Estimating data from two sources

Taylor v. Shippers Transp. Express Inc., No. CV 13-02092 BRO (PLAx), 2014 WL 12560879 (C.D. Cal. Jul. 7, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court imposed sanctions, including an adverse inference and possible evidence preclusion (TBD after recovery efforts were exhausted), where Defendant failed to preserve its employees? text messages, including highly relevant text messages, by failing to implement a litigation hold and where despite Defendant?s attempts to recover the deleted information, the court deemed it ?very unlikely? that such efforts would result in full production; court also reasoned that even if all missing documents were produced, Plaintiffs would still be prejudiced in light of less time to review the evidence and prepare for trial

Nature of Case: Class action employment litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Text messages, ESI

Sexton v. Lecavalier, 11 F. Supp. 3d 439 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 11, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court declined to hold third party in contempt where failure to produce Gmail in native format was result of good faith (but mistaken) belief that Gmail emails cannot be produced in native format; opinion noted options for production of Gmail emails in native format

Electronic Data Involved: Gmail emails

Lee v. Chicago Youth Ctrs., 69 F. Supp. 3d 885 (N.D. Ill. 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Reasoning that ?[h]aving contented themselves to file a response to the motion to compel that was conclusory and factually and legally unsupported, the defendants must live with the consequences of that decision,? the court found privilege was waived as to two allegedly inadvertently produced emails; court?s analysis also criticized Defendants? attempts to rectify the inadvertent production where, upon being notified of possible inadvertent production, they relied upon their vendor?the same vendor responsible for the inadvertent production in the first place?to search for privileged information which the vendor subsequently missed and also criticized defense counsels? failure to undertake a review of the information themselves: ?There is a good deal of merit to the plaintiff?s contention that defendants? four lawyers, who are members of a firm whose ?website boasts a roster of ?nearly 800 attorneys,? having ?delegated document review to an unidentified outside vendor (particularly after having been specifically advised of a potential problem with the production)? simply cannot be heard to argue that they took ?the kind of prompt reasonable steps to rectify any error in production which should allow them now to assert inadvertence and avoid a finding of waiver.??

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Stewart v. Nucor Corp., No. 3:13-cv-0057-KGB, 2014 WL 12611316 (E.D. Ark. Dec. 8, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Defendant moved to strike Plaintiffs answer, enter default judgement and give an adverse inference jury instruction as sanctions for alleged spoliation of video footage. The court held that destruction of the footage was prejudicial to Plaintiff, being the only recording of the accident. Defendant did not have an official retention policy and indicated the video at issue was overwritten ?within weeks of the accident through routine system operation.? However the court did not find Defendant acted in bad faith, and thus denied with prejudice Plaintiff?s motion to strike Defendant?s answer and enter default judgement. The court denied without prejudice Plaintiff?s request to strike the affirmative defense asserting Plaintiff?s fault as well as the request to prohibit Defendant from mentioning the tape/contents/employee statements regarding the tape during trial. Plaintiff may file a motion in limine to further pursue exclusion of evidence.

Electronic Data Involved: Video footage

Virco Mfg. Corp. v. Hertz Furniture Sys., No. CV 13-2205 JAK(JCx), 2014 WL 12591482 (C.D. Cal. Fan. 21, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: The court granted Defendant?s motion to compel production of email attachments, noting that ?by failing to produce email attachments, plaintiff has effectively redacted, based upon relevance, portions of documents it otherwise apparently views to be discoverable/relevant/responsive to defendants? discovery requests.? The court further noted that Plaintiff ?offered no evidence that it would suffer any undue burden from producing such electronic data.?

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Catagory:Case Summaries