Catagory:Case Summaries

Multifeeder Tech. Inc. v. British Confectionery Co. Ltd., No. 09-1090 (JRT/TNL), 2012 WL 4128385 (D. Minn. Apr. 26, 2012); Multifeeder Tech. Inc. v. British Confectionery Co. Ltd., No. 09-1090 (JRT/TNL), 2012 WL 4135848 (D. Minn. Sept. 18, 2012)

In this case, the Magistrate Judge recommended that an adverse inference be issued, that Defendant be held in contempt and that significant monetary sanctions be imposed upon his determination that two of Defendant’s employees had intentionally spoliated evidence by deleting certain information and by failing to reveal the existence of encrypted data.  Upon the parties’ objections, the District Court adopted in part the Magistrate Judge’s recommendation, but increased the monetary sanctions imposed.

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Hynix Semiconductor, Inc. v. Rambus, Inc., No. C-00-20905 RMW (N.D. Cal. Sept. 21, 2012)

As has been previously discussed on this blog (here), two federal courts analyzing nearly identical facts came to differing conclusions regarding whether a party to both litigations had committed spoliation by destroying documents pursuant to a newly adopted document retention policy.  In Hynix Semiconductor, Inc. v. Rambus, Inc. (N.D. Cal.), the court determined that Rambus did not spoliate documents and the case was resolved in favor of Rambus (i.e., its patents were found to be enforceable and Hynix was ordered to pay damages and future royalties).  In Micron Tech., Inc. v. Rambus, Inc. (D. Del.), the court found that Rambus did spoliate documents and, as a sanction, ordered that the at-issue patents were unenforceable as to Micron.  Both cases were appealed to the Federal Circuit, which clarified the proper standard for determining when the duty to preserve arose—the crux of the spoliation question and an issue about which the two lower courts disagreed.  The Federal Circuit court concluded that the district court in the Northern District of California had “applied too narrow a standard of forseeability” with regard to the question of when litigation was reasonably anticipated and remanded the case for further consideration.

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Mailhoit v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., —F.R.D.—, 2012 WL 3939063 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 7, 2012)

In this case the court addressed Defendant’s request for broad discovery of the content of Plaintiff’s social networking sites for the purpose of “test[ing] Plaintiff’s claims about her emotional and mental state.”  Because three of the four categories of information sought by Defendant failed Rule 34(b)(1)(A)’s “reasonable particularity” requirement, the court largely denied Defendant’s motion to compel.

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Inhalation Plastics, Inc. v. Medex Cardio-Pulmonary, Inc., No. 2:07-CV-116, 2012 WL 3731483 (S.D. Ohio Aug. 28, 2012)

In this case, the court held that privilege had been waived as to 347 pages of inadvertently produced emails where, among other things, Defendant failed to establish the reasonableness of the precautions taken to prevent the disclosure and “failed to take adequate measures to rectify or mitigate the damage of the disclosure.”

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Robinson v. Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc., No. 3:12-cv-00127-PK (D. Or. Aug. 29, 2012)

Here, Defendant sought to compel production of discovery in several categories including “all social media content involving [Plaintiff] since July 1, 2008” that revealed or related to Plaintiff’s “‘emotion, feeling, or mental state,’ to ‘events that could be reasonably expected to produce a significant emotion, feeling, or mental state,’ or to allegations in [Plaintiff’s] complaint.”

Addressing the categories requested, the court indicated that it saw “no principled reason to articulate different standards for the discoverability of communications through email, text message, or social media platforms.”

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Boeynaems v. LA Fitness Int’l LLC, Nos. 10-2326, 11- 2644, 2012 WL 3536306 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 16, 2012)

Here, the court considered cost allocation in discovery prior to class certification and, taking into account Defendant’s already significant production and related expenditures, concluded that “where (1) class certification is pending, and (2) the plaintiffs have asked for very extensive discovery, compliance with which will be very expensive, that absent compelling equitable circumstances to the contrary, the plaintiffs should pay for the discovery they seek.”  Thus, Plaintiffs were ordered to bear the costs of additional discovery “at least until the class action determination is made.”

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Kleen Prods. LLC v. Packaging Corp. of Am., No. 1:10-cv-05711 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 21, 2012)

In the ongoing Kleen Products litigation in the Northern District of Illinois, the parties have been litigating the question of whether defendants should be required to utilize predictive coding to conduct their discovery review.  The Court has held several days of evidentiary hearings on this issue over the past several months and the parties have now entered into a stipulation, signed by the Court (Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan), wherein, among other things, the plaintiffs have agreed that they will not argue that predictive coding must be utilized with respect to any request for production served on any defendant prior to October 1, 2013.  After that, the parties reserve all rights, and agree to meet and confer regarding appropriate search methodologies for newly collected documents.  In light of this stipulation, no further evidentiary hearings on the matter are scheduled.

A copy of the stipulation is available here.

Chin v. Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, — F.3d —, 2012 WL 2760776 (2d Cir. July 10, 2012)

On appeal, Plaintiff argued that Defendant’s failure to issue a litigation hold “amounted to gross, rather than simple, negligence” and that the District Court erred in denying a motion for sanctions in the form of an adverse inference.  Finding the District Court did not abuse its discretion, the Circuit Court rejected "the notion that a failure to institute a ‘litigation hold’ constitutes gross negligence per se.” 

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Nat’l Day Laborer Org. Network v. United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement Agency, — F. Supp. 2d —, 2012 WL 2878130 (S.D.N.Y. July 13, 2012)

In this FOIA case, Judge Shira Scheindlin addressed the adequacy of the government’s search for information responsive to plaintiffs’ substantial FOIA request.

This case addresses plaintiffs’ request for information pursuant to the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and their assertions that defendants’ searches for such information were inadequate.  In its analysis, the court expressly acknowledged that “the search obligations under FOIA are not identical to those under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,” but nonetheless reasoned that “much of the logic behind the increasingly well-developed caselaw on e-discovery searches is instructive in the FOIA context . . . .” 

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Apple, Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co. Ltd., No. C 11-1846 LHK (PSG) (N.D. Cal. July 25, 2012)

In this case, the court sanctioned Defendant for the loss of relevant emails resulting from Defendant’s failure to halt the auto-delete feature of its proprietary email system and failure to appropriately follow up with employees subject to the litigation hold to ensure compliance.  As a sanction, the court ordered an adverse inference instruction allowing the jury to presume that the evidence lost was both relevant and favorable to the plaintiff.

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