Case Summaries – Page 142 – Electronic Discovery Law

UMG Recording, Inc. v. Escape Media Group, Inc., No. 11 Civ. 8407, 2014 WL 5089743 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 29, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court granted motion for sanctions for Defendants? bad faith deletion of relevant records related to uploading infringing materials to its music distribution service despite a duty to preserve and found that Plaintiffs were entitled to judgment as a matter of law that certain defendants illegally uploaded infringing materials; for culpable spoliation of source code, including by failing to preserve relevant data stored on a backup server when the lease on that server expired, court found that defendants were precluded from raising one of their substantive defenses to plaintiff?s motion for summary judgment

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, source code

Bradfield v. Mid-Continent Cas. Co., No. 5:13-cf-222-Oc-10PRL, 2014 WL 4626864 (M.D. Fla. Sep. 15, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where plaintiffs? law firm experienced severe power surge that damaged server and firm engaged IT expert who made good faith effort to restore and obtain all data on firm?s computer system, including data responsive to defendant?s document requests, court found that plaintiffs had met their burden of showing that additional ESI was not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost, and further determined that circumstances did not warrant forensic examination of firm?s computer system as defendant failed to show good cause for the examination and could not demonstrate that the likely benefit of the discovery sought outweighed the significant burden and expense, considering the importance of the issues at stake and notwithstanding defendant?s offer to bear the financial cost of the forensic examination

Nature of Case: Insurance coverage dispute

Am. Gen. Life Ins. Co. v. Vistana Condominium Owners Assoc., No. 2:12-cv-01324-JAD-NJK, 2014 WL 2041950 (D. Nev. May 16, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where defendant produced documents as they were received from third parties and with metadata allowing plaintiff to identify the documents by bates range, file path, and document title, court found that the production ?largely complied? with Rule 34 and the obligation to produce documents as kept in the usual course of business and that sanctions were not warranted but also found that the responses created unnecessary obstacles to the plaintiff and ordered defendant to indicate whether the documents it produced were actually responsive, reasoning that plaintiff should not have to ?guess at which requests were responded to and which were not?

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Jones v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., No. 12 C 771, 2014 WL 37843 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 6, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Videotape of collision filmed from train was admissible, despite inability of defendant to produce the hard drive from which it originally was copied, where both eyewitness testimony which corroborated the footage and chain of custody evidence established its authenticity; no spoliation sanctions for reuse of hard drive where such reuse was a ?routine practice? for defendant and because plaintiff could not establish prejudice resulting from the loss of the hard drive (the video was available)

Nature of Case: Personal injury (train/car collision)

Electronic Data Involved: Original hard drive containing video footage

Robocast, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., No. 10-1055-RGA, 2014 WL 789086 (D. Del. Feb. 25, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: District court sustained Microsoft’s objection to special master’s order granting adverse inference instruction in light of finding that Microsoft’s failure to preserve source code was negligent rather than willful or grossly negligent; a finding of bad faith is required in order for an adverse inference instruction to be appropriate

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Source code

Cognate Bioservices, Inc. v. Smith, Civil No. WDQ-13-1797, 2014 WL 988857 (D. Md. Mar. 12, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court denied motion for an order to preserve evidence, finding that defendant had complied with his duty to preserve — he gave opposing party notice that the laptop he used in connection with his employment at competitor would be returned after his resignation, provided the name and address of the person in possession of the laptop, and made efforts to ensure that relevant information on the laptop was not deleted

Nature of Case: Employer sued former employee and his new consulting firm for violations of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, misappropriations of products, misappropriations of trade secrets

Electronic Data Involved: Laptop, computer passwords to former employer’s virtual private network and server computers

State v. Otkovic, No. 20120197-CA, 2014 WL 969232 (Utah Ct. App. Mar. 13, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Remanding case for retrial on other issues, appellate court found no error by trial court in admitting text messages into evidence, and discussed foundational requirements that must be met for admission of text messages

Nature of Case: Criminal

Electronic Data Involved: Text messages

Zeller v. S. Cent. Emergency Med. Servs., No. 1:13-CV-2584, 2014 WL 2094340 (M.D. Pa. May 20, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court ruled that plaintiff was entitled to a “first review” of results of independent forensic examination of plaintiff’s email account, and that plaintiff and defendants would share equally in cost of restoring and searching plaintiff’s emails, up to a maximum contribution by plaintiff of $1,500

Nature of Case: Family and Medical Leave Act claims

Electronic Data Involved: Plaintiff’s emails

Knoderer v. State Farm Lloyds, No. 06-13-00027-CV, 2014 WL 4699136 (Tex. App. Sep. 19, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Trial court erred in granting remarkable discovery sanctions of procedural “death penalty” together with over $1 million in sanctions against plaintiffs, as destroyed evidence did not go to heart of case, but was, instead, impeachment evidence; record did not reflect the required consideration by trial court of appropriate lesser sanctions or an explanation of why case was exceptional and lesser sanctions would be inadequate; and court wrongly awarded attorneys’ fees, expert fees, and costs for the entire case rather than those related only to the sanctionable conduct

Nature of Case: Insurance dispute

Electronic Data Involved: Digital photographs

Green v. Monarch Recovery Mgmt., Inc., No. 1:13-cv-00418-SEB-MJD, 2014 WL 1631825 (S.D. Ind. Apr. 24, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where defendant produced PDF version of requested spreadsheet which was over 1,000 pages long when printed with only 50 pages that were not redacted, court ruled that spreadsheet must be produced in its native Excel format, explaining: 1) “One of the unique strengths of Excel software is the ability to implement calculations and formulae that are not evident in a PDF version, so merely a PDF imprint of the surface information is not sufficient,” 2) the ability to search the spreadsheet is essential to its usefulness, and 3) due to its structure, a printed or PDF version of a large Excel spreadsheet is “often useless” from an evidentiary standpoint

Nature of Case: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act claims

Electronic Data Involved: Excel spreadsheet

Catagory:Case Summaries