Case Summaries – Page 225 – Electronic Discovery Law

Read v. Teton Springs Golf & Casting Club, LLC, 2010 WL 2697596 (D. Idaho July 6, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where defendant attached to a motion an email not previously produced and where plaintiff thereafter sought an explanation for the source of the email, access to defendant?s hard drives, and sanctions, the court found defendant had responded to discovery in good faith but ordered defendant to identify the source of the email at issue and all other hard drives containing responsive documents in its possession; where a custodian represented his hard drive had been replaced in 2006, but produced no email prior to 2007, court (without suggesting misconduct) ordered production of his hard drive to be mirrored

Nature of Case: Claims arising from the manner in which Defendants marketed and sold their properties

Electronic Data Involved: Email, hard drives

Peal v. Lee, 933 N.E.2d 450 (Ill. Ct. App. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: On appeal from the trial court?s order of dismissal, where the evidence indicated that plaintiff repeatedly utilized scrubbing software to delete data subject to preservation and which the court had ordered the plaintiff to produce and likely discarded other relevant external drives, the appellate court considered the six factors contemplated by the trial court when determining the proper sanction, namely, ?surprise, prejudice, the type of evidence at issue, diligence, timeliness of objection, and good faith? and affirmed the sanction upon finding ?absolutely no evidence that the trial court abused its discretion?

Nature of Case: Defamation and related claims

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, contents of hard drives, external drives

Maggette v. BL Dev. Corp., 2010 WL 3522798 (N.D. Miss. Sept. 2, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where the defendant was warned that failure to uphold discovery obligations would result in severe sanctions and where, with the help of a special master, it was determined that defendant ?repeatedly and knowingly? concealed information from the court and acted in bad faith to prevent the discovery of relevant information, including interfering with counsel?s efforts to identify responsive information, the court ordered dispositive sanctions and found that an agency relationship existed as a matter of law between defendant and the bus company involved in the fatal accident that was the basis for plaintiffs? claims

Nature of Case: Claims arising from fatal bus accident

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

State of California ex rel Fowler v. Caremark RX, LLC, 2010 WL 3991298 (Cal. Ct. App. Oct. 13, 2010):

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where defendants resisted production of electronically stored information and sought to shift the costs of such production to plaintiff by presenting affidavits and expert testimony regarding the expected cost of production which, in large part, was the result of defendants? lack of a data retrieval system for archived information and its failure to suspend archiving documents despite the commencement of related litigation in 2004, and where it was revealed that the expert testimony presented lacked sufficient foundation, the court held that defendants had acted in bad faith and could no longer be trusted and awarded plaintiffs? fees and costs in the amount of $42,978.43; affirmed on appeal

Nature of Case: Violation of False Claims Act

Electronic Data Involved: Archived ESI

Reckitt Benckiser, Inc. v. Watson Labs., Inc.-Florida, 2010 WL 4225865 (S.D. Fla. Oct. 21, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where defendant ?unilaterally deviated? from the parties? agreement to produce in TIFF format and argued that the cost of conversion was not justified because the documents were ?minimally responsive?, court upheld the agreement and ordered the defendant to re-produce 19,000 documents that had been produced in native format

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Sofaer Global Hedge Fund v. Brightpoint, Inc, 2010 WL 4701419 (S.D. Ind. Nov. 12, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Addressing several discovery issues, court ordered plaintiff to undertake search of 13 custodians, despite objection that only one custodian was likely to maintain relevant records, where the paucity of documents produced from plaintiff?s championed custodian indicated the need for additional searching but, as to former employees records, etc. which plaintiff alleged were unavailable because the computers were wiped for use by other employees, court reasoned that ?a party obviously cannot produce documents that do not exist? and declined to compel their production; court denied defendants? request for dismissal but, because plaintiff?s opposition on many issues was ?substantially unjustified? granted the fees related to pursuing those requests

Nature of Case: Claims arising from loan made by plaintiff based on false representations by defendant

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Goshawk Dedicated, Ltd. v. Amer. Viatical Servs., LLC, 2010 WL 5250360 (N.D. Ga. Oct. 4, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Clarifying the nature of its order regarding costs, court stated that its prior order requiring plaintiff to deposit funds into the court registry sufficient to cover the third party?s anticipated costs of producing ESI specifically excluded attorney?s fees but did not preclude recovery of them, and ordered compliance with its prior order

Nature of Case: Fraud and negligence claims

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Voom HD Holdings LLC v. Echostar Satellite LLC, No. 600292/08 (N.Y. Sup. Nov. 3, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court ordered adverse inference for grossly negligent failure to preserve where defendant?s duty to preserve was triggered by its awareness that its decision to terminate an agreement with plaintiff would trigger litigation but where defendant failed to impose a litigation hold until after plaintiff?s complaint was filed and failed to discontinue its automatic deletion of emails which resulted in the loss of relevant emails; court?s analysis included discussion of prior sanctions against defendant for failure to preserve in Broccoli v. Echostar Commc’ns Corp., 229 F.R.D. 506 (D. Md. 2005)

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Ruise v. State, 43 So.3d 885 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. Sept. 7, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court held GPS data was properly admitted as a business record where the state presented testimony of an employee for the GPS monitoring company who explained how the monitoring system worked and the testimony of appellant?s probation officer who explained how he accessed the GPS database and printed the exhibits introduced, and where the probation officer had previously tested the accuracy of the GPS system by taking appellant to different locations and checking the accuracy of the monitoring data

Nature of Case: Probation revocation

Electronic Data Involved: GPS monitoring data

United States v. Salyer, Cr. No. S-10-0061 LKK (GGH), 2010 WL 3036444 (E.D. Cal. Aug. 2, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Acknowledging the general rule that the Government has no obligation to specifically identify Brady/Giglio material that has been disclosed to a defendant, the court noted its authority to require identification nonetheless and, considering the volume of the government?s disclosure, the individual defendant?s detention awaiting trial, the small size of his defense team, the lack of parallel civil litigation, and the lack of corporate assistance in identifying evidence, ordered the government to identify Brady material already disclosed and in subsequent disclosures

Nature of Case: Criminal

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Catagory:Case Summaries