Case Summaries – Page 206 – Electronic Discovery Law

Murphy v. Target Corp., No. 09cv1436-BEN (WMc), 2011 WL 2728217 (S.D. Cal. July 12, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where target indicated the requested discovery would require the expenditure of approximately 146 hours of employees? time and cost $4,360 and also argued that the requested discovery would invade employees? privacy and was minimally relevant, court found that the burden to Target did not outweigh the likely benefit, rejected defendant?s arguments regarding privacy and relevance, and granted plaintiff?s motion to compel

Nature of Case: Employment Litigation

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Tiffany (NJ) LLC v. Andrew, No. 10 Civ. 947 (WHP)(HBP), 276 F.R.D. 143 (S.D.N.Y. 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Undertaking the appropriate comity analysis and finding that only two of seven factors weighed in favor of plaintiffs and that every other favor weighed in favor of the non-party banks, court denied motion to compel production of banking records of non-party Chinese banks

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Banking records

Orillaneda v. French Culinary Inst., No. 07 Civ. 3206(RJH)(HBP), 2011 WL 4375365 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 19, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Court found plaintiff?s request for information related to defendant?s internal search procedures and information systems did not seek relevant information and that plaintiff had not indentified facts that suggested defendant?s document production was deficient and granted defendant?s motion for a protective order stating, ?Discovery concerning these areas may be appropriate in certain circumstances, but it is not appropriate in this case unless and until plaintiff makes a specific showing that defendant?s production is deficient.?

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Information related to defendant?s internal search procedures and information systems

Oce N. Amer., Inc. v, MCS Servs., Inc., No. WMN-10-0984, 2011 WL 6130542 (D. Md. Dec. 7, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where an employee of defendant used scrubbing software intended to delete illicit, non-responsive ESI from a lap top subject to court-ordered preservation and in the process also deleted potentially relevant ESI, the court found that such behavior was at least negligent and thus indicated that sanctions were warranted, but reserved judgment on what sanctions would be imposed until the severity of the resulting prejudice could be determined; where a second employee intentionally completed a Windows update that deleted Restore Points from the hard drive (also subject to court-ordered preservation), the court found the spoliation was at least negligent but again withheld imposition of a sanction pending a determination of the prejudice suffered; the court ordered defendants to pay plaintiff?s reasonable expenses in making the motion, including attorney?s fees

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement, etc.

Electronic Data Involved: ESI on employees’ hard drives

LG Elecs. U.S.A., Inc., v. Whirlpool Corp., No. 08 C 0242, 2011 WL 5008425 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 20, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Regarding recovery of costs for electronic discovery, court acknowledged that it was ?undisputable that electronic discovery costs are available under Section 1920(4)? but that there was ?scant legal authority? providing guidance on the matter and noted that it was difficult for the court to determine the reasonableness of the costs at issue and thus awarded half of the requested costs equaling $35,292.56

Nature of Case: Lanham Act: False Advertising

Electronic Data Involved: Costs

Chevron Corp. v. E-Tech Int., No. 10cv1146-IEG (WMc), 2011 WL 1898908 (S.D. Cal. May 19, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: The court denied defendant’s Motion for Reconsideration of the court?s order allowing forensic examination of the at issue hard drive by a neutral forensic examiner where defendant failed to meet the standard for reconsideration

Electronic Data Involved: Mirror image of hard drive

Innis Arden Golf Club, Inc. v. O?Brien & Gere Eng?rs. Inc., No. CV106006581, 2011 WL 6117908 (Conn. Super. Ct. Nov. 18, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where plaintiff produced 64,350 pages of documents in electronic form without identifying what request the documents were responsive to, the court ordered the parties to cooperate to prepare a load file to assist in defendant?s review and ordered defendant to bear the cost and, where the court agreed with defendants that metadata was an ?important source for the defendants as part of the orderly production? of ESI, the court ordered the parties to cooperate ?in completing the metadata requested by the defendants in an appropriate format? and that ?outside costs, if any, other than copying costs for the metadata [would] also be borne by the defendants?

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, metadata

Cannata v. Wyndham Worldwide Corp., No. 2:1-cv-00068-PMP-VCF, 2011 WL 5598306 (D. Nev. Nov. 17, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Reasoning that the litigation holds were not discoverable but that the details surrounding them were, court ordered defendant to produce ?information surrounding the litigation hold? including when defendants learned of claims, when and to whom litigation hold instructions were sent, what categories of information were identified for preservation , etc.

Electronic Data Involved: Litigation holds

McNulty v. Reddy Ice Holdings, Inc., 2011 116892 (E.D. Mich. Jan. 13, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where defendant preserved 4 terabytes of electronically stored information and 744 boxes of paper documents to be reviewed for production, court cited Rule 26(b)(2)(B) for the proposition that burdensome discovery should be limited but found that plaintiff had good cause for requesting relevant information and ordered the parties to meet and confer to develop search terms or objective search criteria for identifying responsive ESI as well as to develop a search plan for the hard copy

Nature of Case: RICO

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, hard copy

Ashton v. Knight Transp., Inc., No. 3:09-CV-0759-B, 2011 WL 734282 (N.D. Tex. Feb. 22, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where, in a case arising from a fatal accident, the court determined that defendants? failure to preserve the tires of the involved truck and Qualcomm messages between the driver and the truck company was in bad faith and where that failure resulted in prejudice to the plaintiff, the court ordered that defendants? pleadings and defenses to liability be struck and, ?because defendants? misconduct led to the late discovery of a potential claim for punitive damages,? granted plaintiff leave to file an amended her complaint to add such a claim

Nature of Case: Hit and run

Electronic Data Involved: Qualcomm messages (“email type messages”)

Catagory:Case Summaries