Case Summaries – Page 141 – Electronic Discovery Law

Hosch v. BAE Sys. Info. Solutions, Inc., No. 1:13-cv-00825 (AJT/TCB), 2014 WL 1681694 (E.D. Va. Apr. 24, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court ordered dismissal of Plaintiff?s claims with prejudice and payment of Defendant?s attorney?s fees and costs incurred for numerous discovery motions and forensic inspection of Plaintiff?s electronic devices for Plaintiff?s bad faith spoliation including defiance of the court?s discovery orders by refusing to submit certain devices and accounts for forensic inspection and by refusing to produce certain information and the destruction of ESI by wiping both his iPhone and Blackberry device, among other things

Nature of Case: Employment litigation (harassment, retaliation)

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, forensic inspection of devices (iPhone, Blackberry)and accounts

Mazzei v. Money Store, No. 01cv5694 (JGK)(RLE), 2014 WL 3610894 (S.D.N.Y. July 21, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Defendant failed to preserve data in its control (an issue it hotly contested) when it sold certain assets of its wholly owned subsidiary, including the database/?system? that contained the at issue data; court found failure to preserve was willful and in bad faith and that plaintiff had been prejudiced by the loss; where a non-party who works with defendant indicated that it had information from the at issue system but that the information was not ?readable? and that it would be expensive to extract and convert it, the court ordered defendant to bear the cost of determining whether the system was searchable and to pay plaintiff his attorneys fees for the motion for sanctions

Nature of Case: Class action re: violation of Truth in Lending Act

Electronic Data Involved: Database

Audio Visual Innovations, Inc. v. Burgdolf, No. 13-10372, 2014 WL 505565 (E. D. Mich. Feb. 3, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Forensic examination of defendants’ electronic devices was appropriate given nature of case and allegations against individual defendants; court identified particular devices to be examined and provided specific guidelines for the examination and review of ESI, but denied plaintiff’s request for attorneys’ fees since defendants’ objections were reasonable; court further ruled that costs associated with obtaining the information from the devices would be borne by plaintiff

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets

Electronic Data Involved: ESI on defendant’s electronic devices

Chewning v. Commonwealth of Virginia, No. 2204-12-4, 2014 WL 931053 (Va. Ct. App. Mar. 11, 2014) (unpublished)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Trial court did not err in admitting cell phone records or the content of text messages exchanged between Chewning and girlfriend (who pleaded guilty to murdering her mother) on the day of murder, as records were admissible as computer-generated records not requiring hearsay analysis, and, alternatively, as hearsay admissible under business records exception, text messages were admissible under exception for party and adoptive admissions, and authentication of records and texts was achieved through testimony of Verizon Wireless records custodian; further, court did not err in permitting prosecutor and detective to read aloud certain portions of texts during trial or in permitting the limited interpretation of abbreviations and misspellings provided by the readers

Nature of Case: Criminal

Electronic Data Involved: Cell phone records, text messages

Sprint Commc?ns Co., L.P. v. Comcast Cable Commc?ns, LLC, Nos. 11-2684-JWL, 11-2685-JWL, 11-2686-JWL, 2014 WL 1794552 (D. Kan. May 6, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Evaluating parties’ competing discovery protocols, court noted that defendants had not asked Sprint to collect documents from 60+ custodians, but, rather, faced with Sprint?s failure to identify potential custodians in violation of the agreed discovery order, defendants started suggesting people and asked Sprint either to search those individuals? files or explain why production from particular custodians on list was not necessary; court disapproved of Sprint?s continued failure to work with defendants to reach a reasonable solution, rejected as ?clearly unreasonable? Sprint?s proposal to collect responsive documents from only 12 new custodians, and ordered Sprint to sit down with defendants in a good faith attempt to resolve the issue; court further ordered Sprint to include in its document searches a ?human review? of hard copy documents

Nature of Case: Consolidated cases involving patent infringement claims

Electronic Data Involved: ESI; documents produced in prior litigations; metadata

Vicente v. City of Prescott, No. CV-11-08204-PCT-DGC, 2014 WL 3939277 (D. Ariz. Aug. 13, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where city notified key personnel to preserve relevant evidence but never instructed its IT department to suspend automatic procedure for eliminating deleted emails after 30 days or to assist key individuals in collecting and preserving relevant emails, city?s preservation efforts were “clearly deficient? but no sanctions were warranted as plaintiffs identified only one email that ultimately was lost as a result of defendants? inadequate preservation actions; court further granted plaintiffs? motion to compel production of unredacted versions of two litigation hold letters sent by the city to employees, and ruled on various other dispositive and discovery motions

Nature of Case: First Amendment, retaliation, defamation and related state law claims

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Joffe v. Google, Inc., No. 10-md-02184-CRB (MEJ), 2014 WL 4681035 (N.D. Cal. Sep. 19, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: District Court adopted magistrate judge?s recommendation (at 2014 WL 4681403) but sustained two of plaintiffs? objections to Google?s Jurisdictional Discovery Proposal, ruling that the search should include not only each plaintiff?s network from which communications may have been sent, but also any other network on which plaintiffs? communications might have been received, and that plaintiffs should see the results of the special master?s searches in order to provide the special master with feedback to aid in subsequent searches

Nature of Case: Putative class action in which plaintiffs alleged that Google intentionally intercepted, recorded and stored their Wi-Fi communications

Electronic Data Involved: Google’s “Street View” data

Ades v. Omni Hotels Mgmt. Corp., No. 2:13-cv-02468-CAS(MANx), 2014 WL 4627271 (C.D. Cal. Sep. 8, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Considering plaintiffs? motion for class certification, court discussed Omni?s efforts to preserve call records and recordings and the apparently accidental loss of related call detail records and attendant search functionality; plaintiffs argued that any difficulties in identifying class members was due to Omni?s destruction of data that could have been used to search call recordings, and that it would unfair to allow such difficulties to prejudice class certification; court ultimately certified class and ruled that, to the extent Omni argued that ?identifying class members? may be difficult, those concerns were more properly addressed after class certification

Nature of Case: Putative class action alleging claims under the California Invasion of Privacy Act

Electronic Data Involved: Audio recordings of telephone calls and related data

Ferriggi v. Best Yet Market of Astoria, Inc., No. 8564/2013, 2014 WL 5334000 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Oct. 17, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court found that defendant was negligent in failing to preserve or to make diligent efforts to retrieve surveillance video, but that loss of video did not fatally deprive plaintiff of means to prosecute his action given that witness who viewed the videotape and grocery store worker who unpacked boxes near accident location were available to testify, and accident report and medical response reports provided plaintiff with ability to prove proximate cause of accident; trial court would fashion appropriate negative inference charge against defendant based upon its failure to preserve the videotape and defendant would be precluded from offering testimony at trial to contradict plaintiff’s claim of adequate notice or that defendant created the condition which caused plaintiff to slip and fall

Nature of Case: Slip and fall accident at supermarket

Electronic Data Involved: Surveillance video

Vicente v. City of Prescott, No. CV-11-08204-PCT-DGC, 2014 WL 3894131 (D. Ariz. Aug. 8, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Although court found City’s preservation efforts “plainly deficient,” as City did not notify its IT department to suspend automatic procedure for eliminating deleted emails after 30 days, nor did it instruct its IT department to assist key individuals in collecting and preserving relevant email or provide assistance in doing so from the legal department, court decline to impose case-dispositive sanctions against City because plaintiff did not discuss the bad faith standard nor show how it was satisfied, and loss of only one email did not constitute significant prejudice where plaintiff collected and presented good deal of evidence on same issue; court granted plaintiff?s motion to compel production of unredacted versions of two litigation hold letters sent by the City to its employees

Nature of Case: Fire Captain alleged claims of retaliation in violation of the First Amendment and state law claims for defamation and injunctive relief

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Catagory:Case Summaries