Key Insight: Circuit court pronounced prospective rule that a district court must issue explicit findings of bad faith and prejudice prior to delivering an adverse inference instruction but found district court?s failure to do so in the present case was harmless error and that the Defendant was not entitled to a new trial
Nature of Case: Breach of contract
Key Insight: Court declined to quash subpoena based on the burden of reviewing the requested emails prior to production where, because the request sought all messages to or from particular persons, the court determined that no review of the emails was necessary (that is to say, if the email was to or from one of the identified persons, it was responsive to the subpoena and thus subject to production regardless of content); because the movant was a non-party, however, the court indicated its inclination to set a reasonable cost of production, before production was complete, to prevent the responding party from manipulating production to increase the award and to streamline production and ordered the requesting party to pay the responding non-party $420.00 ?as reasonable compensation for compliance?
Electronic Data Involved: Emails
Key Insight: Lower court ?correctly determined that plaintiff?s mere possession and utilization of a Facebook account is an insufficient basis to compel plaintiff to provide access to the account or to have the court conduct an in camera inspection? and that ?to warrant discovery, defendants must establish a factual predicate for their request by identifying relevant information in plaintiff?s Facebook account?
Nature of Case: Personal Injury
Electronic Data Involved: Facebook
Key Insight: Court declined to compel production of ?the entire source code tree for each accused product? where it found that Plaintiff had not shown the need to fully understand all operations as opposed to ?only those aspects accused in the infringement claims? and where the alleged burden of production was great; court ordered that production of relevant portions of source code must include original files names and be in native format
Nature of Case: Patent Infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Source Code
Key Insight: Court found attorney?s duty to preserve was triggered upon receipt of correspondence terminating her representation but withheld judgment on issue of spoliation until hearing could be held
Nature of Case: Legal Malpractice
Electronic Data Involved: ESI, computers
Key Insight: Where, despite defendant?s assertion of a privacy interest in his and his wife?s (a non-party) electronic devices (computers and smartphone) and phone records, the trial court failed to conduct a proper balancing test before granting Plaintiff?s motion to compel inspection and production of the records, the Supreme Court found that the trial court had abused its discretion, that the invocation of a privacy right should have triggered analysis of the relevant balancing test, and that the wife?s non-party status was a factor for consideration, and vacated the trial court?s order and remanded for further consideration
Nature of Case: Breach of fiduciary duty and misappropriation of trade secrets
Electronic Data Involved: Personal computers, smartphone
Key Insight: Where plaintiff sought to discover whether flash drives containing its sensitive information had been accessed by defendant since he started working for his new employer and also sought production of all relevant information contained on defendant?s laptop, the court indicated that Plaintiff?s expert would be allowed to image and search defendant?s laptop to determine if the flash drives had been accessed and to produce to Plaintiff any ?actual files? from those drives determined to be on defendant?s computer without first allowing defendant to conduct a review for relevance or privilege; as to other relevant documents found on the laptop which were not taken from the at-issue flash drives, the court ordered that any keyword hits be provided to defendant to review before production; to assuage concerns that relevant information would be withheld, court ordered defendant to prepare a log of any documents withheld on relevance grounds to allow the parties to have ?reasoned discussions? regarding those withholdings
Nature of Case: Breach of non-compete agreement, misappropriation of proprietary information
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
Key Insight: Where Defendant indicated that historical data was unavailable because it had been stored on magnetic tapes that could only be accessed with outdated technology that had been disassembled (VAX computer) and that the tapes had degraded and the information could not be retrieved, the court granted Plaintiff?s motion to compel discovery related to the ?failure to preserve or the destruction? of the at-issue data and ordered Defendant to produce a 30(b)(6) designee and to produce all relevant documents related to the ?preservation, failure to preserve and/or destruction? of the historical data and technology
Nature of Case: Groundwater contamination
Electronic Data Involved: Magnetic tapes, VAX computer
Key Insight: Where Defendant preserved a portion of the relevant surveillance video following Plaintiff?s fall but, upon being ordered to preserve substantially more, could not comply because the video had been automatically overwritten by that time and could not be recovered, the court declined to impose an adverse inference absent evidence of a culpable mindset
Nature of Case: Premises liability (slip and fall)
Electronic Data Involved: Surveillance video
Key Insight: Court denied motion for spoliation sanctions related to automatic deletion of email backups where no email from the time of Plaintiff?s separation from the defendant existed on that system because of the passage of time and where the automatic deletions did not affect any emails saved on individual employees? computers – who had been instructed to preserve relevant information; court also declined to impose sanctions for the destruction of files on former employees? computers where Defendant claimed the computers contained no relevant information that had not already been produced and where the repurposing of the computers was apparently undertaken in good faith; upholding magistrate judge?s prior discovery orders, court noted the magistrate judge?s recognition that although some of the custodians from which plaintiff sought discovery may have relevant information, ?a few pointed questions in a deposition were less burdensome than grasping at the periphery by reviewing thousands or tens of thousands of e-mails in the hope of discovering a limited number of interactions that might, together, indicate something about whether discrimination played a role in the actions at the center of this case?
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: ESI, email, computer files of former employees
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