Case Summaries – Page 183 – Electronic Discovery Law

Howell v. Buckeye Ranch, Inc., No. 2:11-cv-1014, 2012 WL 5265170 (S.D. Ohio Oct. 1, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Court denied motion to compel Plaintiff?s production of her user names and passwords for all social media sites and indicated that Defendants were free to request relevant information from the private portions of Plaintiff?s social media accounts which Plaintiff?s counsel could access and produce and that Plaintiff remained obligated to preserve all relevant information and that if any information had been deleted, Plaintiff?s counsel should advise Defendants? counsel and attempt to recover the deleted data

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Social Media (Facebook)

Phillip M. Adam & Assocs. V. Dell Computer Corp., No. 2012-1238, 2013 WL 1092719 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 18, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Circuit court found that the district court erred in imposing an adverse inference for failure to preserve absent evidence of bad faith and thus reversed the district court?s imposition of an adverse inference sanction

Nature of Case: Patent Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Source Code

Ramadhan v. Onondaga Cnty., No. 5:10-CV-103, 2012 WL 1900198 (N.D.N.Y. May 24, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Addressing plaintiff?s motion for sanctions court laid out relevant law of spoliation and found that defendants had a duty to preserve relevant evidence but declined to impose sanctions where plaintiff failed to establish that allegedly spoliated emails were relevant; where plaintiff failed to establish that additional SERT video existed or was relevant to his claims; and where plaintiff failed to establish prejudice from unproduced booking video, particularly where he presented conflicting assertions regarding its relevance (where he at once moved to preclude presentation of evidence related to the underlying offense or arrest and sought sanctions for the booking video?s spoliation)

Electronic Data Involved: Emails, video

Crop Data Mgmt. Sys., Inc. v. Software Solutions Integrated LLC, No. 2:11-cv-01437 LKK KJN, 2012 WL 2571201 (E.D. Cal. July 2, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff?s motion to compel ?complete forensic imaging and an open ended computer inspection of all of defendants ?electronically stored information?? where the court found the request was overly broad in scope and unduly burdensome and costly in light of the time and cost of the necessary privilege reviews by defendants and other expenses associated with the business interruption of such inspections, where ?plaintiff ha[d] not reasonably attempted to obtain the information it [sought] short of the proposed, burdensome computer investigation,? and where it was ?highly improbable? that the parties could complete the inspection by the close of discovery

Electronic Data Involved: Forensic inspection of computers and servers

Fatpipe Networks India, Ltd. v. Xroads Networks, Inc., No. 2:09-CV-186 TC DN, 2012 WL 192792 (D. Utah Jan. 23, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Where defendant claimed infringement based on alleged testing of defendant?s devices but claimed that no testing documentation was created and where, upon a neutral third party?s examination of the relevant devices, it was revealed that two key logs were missing expected messages and reflected abnormal device behaviors that plaintiff was unable to explain, the court held that defendant was prejudiced by plaintiff?s failure to protect and preserve the logs and the resulting inability to verify purported testing and thus ordered that all evidence of plaintiff?s testing of the devices would be precluded from introduction to the record or other use and ordered plaintiff to pay defendant?s expenses associated with the sanctions motion

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Log messages, evidence of testing

Race Tires Amer., Inc. v. Hoosier Racing Tire, Corp., 674 F.3d 158 (3d Cir. 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: On appeal, the Third Circuit vacated the District Court?s approval of taxable costs related to electronic discovery and remanded with instruction to re-tax in accordance with this opinion. Specifically, the court concluded that the relevant vendors? charges ?would not qualify as fees for ?exemplification?? and that ?of the numerous services the vendors performed, only the scanning of hard copy documents, the conversion of native files to TIFF, and the transfer of VHS tapes to DVD involved ?copying?? and were thus recoverable.

Nature of Case: Antitrust

Electronic Data Involved: Vendor charges related to electronic discovery

Hudson v. AIH Receivable Mgmt. Servs., No. 10-2287-JAR-KGG, 2012 WL 1194329 (D. Kan. Mar. 14, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Where employee ?at the heart of Plaintiff?s claims of discrimination and harassment? ?misunderstood the requirements of the litigation hold? and continued his practice of deleting all emails every day but claimed that he never received or erased any emails related to plaintiff?s lawsuit and that all of his sent emails were preserved (as were the emails sent to him from his managers because of their compliance with the litigation hold), court found the deletions were negligent and ordered an instruction that the emails were destroyed and would have been favorable to plaintiff?s case

Nature of Case: Employment litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Special Markets Ins. Consultants, Inc. v. Lynch, No. 11 C 9181, 2012 WL 1565348 (N.D. Ill. May 2, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Court granted motion to quash third party subpoenas seeking production of defendants? email records, emails, text messages, and other related information (from Yahoo and Verizon) where the court found defendants did have standing to challenge the subpoenas and where the court further found that the subpoenas violated the Stored Communications Act, which does not allow for the production of such information pursuant to civil subpoena

Nature of Case: Breach of employment contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email records and messages; phone records and text messages

Illiana Surgery and Med. Ctr., No. 2:07 cv 3, 2012 WL 2049828 (N.D. Ind. June 5, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Court granted motion to compel defendant to designate a 30(b)(6) deponent to be deposed regarding defendant?s method of maintaining electronically stored information during the relevant time period where the information was relevant to plaintiff?s claims of bad faith and where defendant had produced requested information in a piecemeal fashion and repeatedly supplemented production, despite previously claiming all relevant information had been produced

Nature of Case: Breach of insurance contract and bad faith

Electronic Data Involved: Deponent to testify regarding document management practices

Estate of Carlock v. Williamson, No. 08-3075, 2012 WL 3878595 (C.D. Ill. Sept. 6, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Court denied motion for sanctions and for appointment of special master absent evidence that allegedly relevant audio and video were lost in bad faith and where, despite ?concern? over loss of emails resulting from failure to timely suspend automatic deletions, the court ?[did] not find that relevant evidence was destroyed? and further indicated doubt that relevant emails existed; court further found that failure to suspend automatic deletions was merely negligent and not in bad faith; as to unsearched hard drives, court noted that the parties had already expended a large amount of time and money searching for relevant deleted evidence to no avail and that in light of doubts that relevant email ever existed, there was ?nothing to gain by searching those hard drives?

Nature of Case: Death of inmate while incarcerated

Electronic Data Involved: Audio, video, emails, hard drives

Catagory:Case Summaries