Catagory:Case Summaries

Finjan, Inc. v. Blue Coat Sys., Inc., No. 5:13-cv-03999-BLF, 2014 WL 5321095 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 17, 2014)

In this patent infringement case, Defendant objected to “producing custodial email from archival systems when [the Plaintiff] is not able to do the same in return.”  Plaintiff filed a motion to compel.  In assessing the motion, the court recognized potential limitations on discovery, pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C)(iii).  The court indicated that, “[r]educed to its essence, Rule 26(b)(2)(iii) [sic] requires this court to decide: have Blue Coat’s discovery responses been fair?”  In response, the court concluded that the defendant’s responses had “largely been fair, but not entirely.”  Turning specifically to the question of custodial emails, the court reasoned:

Where Blue Coat has been less than fair is with respect to archival email for its eight custodians. Blue Coat may largely be in the right that it should not have to dig through legacy systems when Finjan is unable to the same for its custodians. But one party’s discovery shortcomings are rarely enough to justify another’s. And here, at least with respect to documents mentioning Finjan—the one specific category of documents Finjan could identify that it needed from archived email—Finjan’s request is reasonable.

A full copy of the court’s opinion is available here.

Venture Corp. Ltd. v. Barrett, No. 5:13-cv-03384-PSG, 2014 WL 5305575 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 16, 2014)

Most lawyers (and hopefully judges) would be forgiven if they could not recite on demand some of the more obscure of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 80 (Stenographic Transcript as Evidence) and Rule 64 (Seizing a Person or Property) come to mind. But Rule 34 (Producing Documents, Electronically Stored Information, and Tangible Things) is about as basic to any civil case as it gets. And yet, over and over again, the undersigned is confronted with misapprehension of its standards and elements by even experienced counsel. Unfortunately, this case presents yet another example.

– Opening paragraph, Venture Corp. Ltd. v. Barrett

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United States v. Vayner, — F.3d —, 2014 WL 4942227 (2d Cir. Oct. 3, 2014)

In this case, the Second Circuit vacated the defendant’s conviction “on a single charge of transfer of a false identification document” upon concluding that the district court erred in admitting a printout of the defendant’s alleged profile on “the Russian equivalent of Facebook,” (“VK.com”) “because the government presented insufficient evidence that the page was what the government claimed it to be—that is, Zhyltsou’s profile page, as opposed to a profile page on the Internet that Zhyltsou did not create or control.” Read More

United States v. Hernandez, No. 14 Cr. 499(KBF), 2014 WL 4510266 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 12, 2014)

Citing ethical implications, the District Court in this criminal case denied nine defendants’ motion to “appoint a tenth attorney to act as a Coordinating Discovery Attorney (“CDA”) on behalf of all nine defendants.” The Court concluded that “[a] vendor with an arms-length contact is clearly preferable” but also indicated that if a CDA was sought, “a stipulation or legally binding document should be entered” which makes clear the responsibilities of the CDA and of defense counsel. Read More

Dynamo Holdings Ltd. P’ship v. Comm’r of Internal Revenue, Nos. 2685-11, 8393-12 (T.C. Sept. 17, 2014)

In this case, the court approved petitioners’  (Dynamo Holdings Ltd. Partnership et. al.) use of predictive coding to identify potentially responsive and privileged data contained on two backup tapes, despite respondent’s  (Commissioner of Internal Revenue) objection that the technology was “unproven.” Read More

United States v. Univ. Nebraska at Kearney, No. 4:11CV3209, 2014 WL 4215381 (D. Neb. Aug. 25, 2014)

In this housing discrimination case, the parties disagreed regarding the proper scope of discovery and plaintiff’s proposed search terms.  Plaintiff sought the production of ESI related to requests for accommodation of a disability in every context (e.g., housing, academics, employment, etc.) while defendants sought to limit production to the “housing” or “residential” contexts.  The court found that plaintiff’s request was overly broad on its face and that the additional costs required by the requested searching would “far outweigh” anything that could be gained.  Moreover, the court agreed with defendants that even with a clawback order, review of potentially responsive documents would be required to protect students’ privacy interests.  Finally, in response to claims that defendants’ proposed search would miss responsive ESI, the court reasoned that “[s]earching for ESI is only one discovery tool,” and suggested that “[s]tandard document production requests, interrogatories, and depositions should suffice – and with far less cost and delay.” Read More

Bridgestone Americas, Inc. v. Int. Bus. Machs. Corp., No. 3:13-1196 (M.D. Tenn. July 22, 2014)

In this case, the court approved plaintiff’s request to use predictive coding in reviewing over two million documents, despite defendant’s objections that the request was an “unwarranted change in the original case management order” and that it would be unfair to allow the use of predictive coding “after an initial screening has been done with search terms.” Read More

Boston Scientific Corp. v. Lee, No. 5:14-mc-80188-BLF-PSG, 2014 WL 3851157 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 4, 2014)

This case illustrates a recurring problem in all civil discovery, especially in intellectual property cases. A party demands the sun, moon and stars in a document request or interrogatory, refusing to give even a little bit. The meet and confer required by a court in advance of a motion is perfunctory at best, with no compromise whatsoever. But when the parties appear before the court, the recalcitrant party possesses newfound flexibility and a willingness to compromise. Think Eddie Haskell singing the Beaver’s praises to June Cleaver, only moments after giving him the business in private. Having considered the arguments, the court GRANTS Nevro’s motion to quash.

Boston Scientific Corp., 2014 WL 3851157, at *1.

In this case, the court addressed plaintiff’s subpoena seeking the production of a complete forensic image of two laptops utilized by the defendant, a former employee of the plaintiff, during his employment with plaintiff’s competitor, who the defendant began working for soon after resigning his position with the plaintiff.  Read More

Automated Solutions Corp. v. Paragon Data Sys., Inc., —F.3d—, 2014 WL 2869286 (6th Cir. June 25, 2014)

In this copyright infringement case, the Sixth Circuit considered plaintiff’s arguments that the district court abused its discretion by denying plaintiff’s motion for spoliation sanctions related to defendant’s failure to preserve the information on a relevant hard drive and a relevant server and that the magistrate judge (and district court) improperly concluded that defendant’s back-up tapes were not subject to the duty to preserve, pursuant to the analysis set forth in Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212 (S.D.N.Y. 2003).  As to all issues, the circuit court affirmed the holdings of the district court. Read More

Brown v. Tellermate Holdings, Ltd., No. 2:11-cv-1122, 2014 WL 2987051 (S.D. Ohio July 1, 2014)

While the preservation, review, and production of ESI often involves procedures and techniques which do not have direct parallels to discovery involving paper documents, the underlying principles governing discovery do not change just because ESI is involved. Counsel still have a duty (perhaps even a heightened duty) to cooperate in the discovery process; to be transparent about what information exists, how it is maintained, and whether and how it can be retrieved; and, above all, to exercise sufficient diligence (even when venturing into unfamiliar territory like ESI) to ensure that all representations made to opposing parties and to the Court are truthful and are based upon a reasonable investigation of the facts. As another Judge of this Court has observed, “trial counsel must exercise some degree of oversight to ensure that their client’s employees are acting competently, diligently and ethically in order to fulfill their responsibility to the Court,” Bratka v. Anheuser–Busch Co., 164 F.R.D. 448, 461 (S.D.Ohio 1995) (Graham, J.). That holds true whether the bulk of the information relevant to discovery is ESI or resides in paper documents.

In this age discrimination case, the court determined that both defendant and counsel failed to uphold their discovery obligations, including by failing to timely produce ESI and by failing to make timely efforts to preserve.  The court observed, however, that the “significant problems arose in this case for one overriding reason: counsel fell far short of their obligation to examine critically the information which Tellermate gave them about the existence and availability of documents requested by the Browns.”  “As a result, they did not produce documents in a timely fashion, made unfounded arguments about their ability and obligation to do so, caused the Browns to file discovery motions to address these issues, and, eventually, produced a key set of documents which were never subject to proper preservation.”  Accordingly, the court ordered that defendant was precluded from “using any evidence which would tend to show that the Browns were terminated for performance-related reasons” and also ordered monetary sanctions, to be paid jointly by defendant and counsel. Read More