Catagory:Case Summaries

Key Insight: Where Plaintiffs argued that Defendant?s document and preservation efforts were inadequate and briefed ?at long length several document production errors, general complications and litigation hold mishandling,? including incorrect volume estimates of documents produced by search terms, date discrepancies in metadata, and corrupt emails (among others) the court noted that Plaintiffs had not obtained a court order against Defendant or attempted to show that it acted in bad faith and found that the allegations did not rise to a level justifying appointment of an outside third party ediscovery auditor, but granted Plaintiffs? motion for depositions of certain document custodians regarding document production issues; court denied motion to require Defendant to recover all documents deleted by certain custodians, including from backup tapes, where the court found that Defendant ?carried out its duty to preserve documents in a manner commensurate with the likely scope and role of [Defendant?s] participation in future litigation? and noted that reasonable efforts do not require the preservation of ?every single scrap of paper?

Nature of Case: Antitrust

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Key Insight: Where Defendant sought spoliation sanctions for Plaintiff?s failure to preserve communications and other evidence related to her job search (related to her mitigation of damages) and where Plaintiff?s counsel explained that many of the job-seeking activities were undertaken electronically and did not result in emails to be preserved, the court reasoned that Plaintiff?s degree of fault with respect to the online services was ?not large,? that allowing her to testify that she ?periodically? reviewed job lists and ?sometimes? clicked on the links was not ?seriously prejudicial,? and that the sanctions sought were disproportional and thus ordered that Plaintiff could not testify regarding specific job inquiries absent documentation of that inquiry and that she could not testify that she applied for one-hundred or more jobs, but indicated that Plaintiff would be allowed to testify that she looked at jobs periodically and sometimes clicked on the links and to testify regarding job applications for which she provided documentation

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Data related to online job searching

Key Insight: Upon motion for reconsideration based on Plaintiff?s location and production of a document previously found to have been spoliated, court found that an adverse inference and monetary sanctions predicated on the finding of spoliation were no longer appropriate but ordered Plaintiff?s counsel to show cause why monetary sanctions should not be imposed for the delay and Defendants? protracted efforts to procure the document?s production

Electronic Data Involved: Single document (ESI)

Key Insight: Court ordered spoliation sanctions for Plaintiff?s intentional destruction of materials related to his claim of copyright infringement at a time when he had a duty to preserve as evidenced by his actions to ?preserve? his work with the copyright office before the release of the allegedly infringing film (Kung Fu Panda) and his consultation with counsel; sanctions excluded evidence of Plaintiff?s 2008 copyright registration which was created with and relied upon evidence that had been destroyed

Nature of Case: Copyright Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Hard copy documents, computer equipment and contents