Case Summaries – Page 225 – Electronic Discovery Law

Alexander v. Archuleta County, 2010 WL 363390 (D. Colo. Jan. 27, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where plaintiff failed to timely produce relevant communications despite a court order and offered no explanation for the delay and where the court determined the delayed production resulted in prejudice to the defendants, that the prejudice could not be cured by additional discovery, and that plaintiff?s discovery conduct was ?in bad faith and willful?, court ordered two affidavits in support of plaintiff?s response to summary judgment stricken and prohibited plaintiff from introducing those witnesses? testimony at trial and for plaintiff to pay defendant?s reasonable attorney?s fees and expenses

Nature of Case: Wrongful termination

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Sunnen Prods. Co. v. Travelers Casualty and Surety Co. of Am., 2010 WL 743663 (E.D. Mo. Feb. 25, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where plaintiff sought discovery regarding similar insurance policies, claims and lawsuits of other insureds, court found the information ?discoverable? and rejected defendant?s claims of undue burden based on alleged inability to conduct an electronic search citing a prior court decision (involving defendant and similar claims of burden) for the proposition that plaintiff would not be denied discovery because of defendant?s election ?to have inadequate mens [sic] of accessing data?

Nature of Case: Insurance litigation

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Field Day, LLC v. County of Suffolk, 2010 WL 1286622 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 25, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court declined to find County employees culpable for spoliation of ESI, but ordered monetary sanctions against the County for negligently failing to adequately preserve ESI and declined harsher sanctions where many documents were produced in hard copy and thus the resulting prejudice was unclear; court?s analysis of culpability included recognition that the alleged spoliation occurred in 2003-2004, during a time when the law of preservation of ESI was not fully developed

Nature of Case: Claims arising from denial of mass gathering permit

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Maldonado v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., 2010 WL 1980319 (D. Kan. May 18, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court denied motion for a protective order preventing disclosure of the video of defendant?s train colliding with plaintiffs? car where defendant?s concerns about video manipulation or commercial exploitation was unwarranted and unsupported by evidence beyond speculation; court ordered production of event recorder data for a relevant time period and, because of the need for proprietary software to analyze the data, ordered defendant to either secure permission for plaintiff to utilize the software independently and produce the data and software outright or make the data and software available at a mutually agreeable time and place for plaintiff?s evaluation

Nature of Case: Claims arising from train vs. car collision

Electronic Data Involved: Video of collision & event recorder data and related software

United States v. Laurent, 2010 WL 2404419 (1st Cir. June 17, 2010):

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: For the erasure of relevant surveillance tape pursuant to department practice, the trial court properly denied defendant?s request for dismissal absent evidence of destruction in bad faith because the evidence was not exculpatory but rather ?potentially useful?; for the delayed disclosure of the existence and subsequent destruction of the tape, trial court properly denied request for sanctions absent a showing of prejudice; trial court properly denied request for an adverse inference absent evidence of bad faith

Nature of Case: Criminal drug charges

Electronic Data Involved: Video surveillance tape

Booker v. Mass. Dept. of Public Health, 612 F.3d 34 (1st Cir. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Trial court did not err in failing to issue an adverse inference instruction where plaintiff failed to establish the evidentiary foundation for such an instruction, namely that the party accused of spoliation was 1) aware of the pending claim, and 2) aware of the document?s relevance to that claim

Nature of Case: Retaliation, torotuous interference with contractual employment relations

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Pitney Bowes Gov. Solutions, Inc. v. United States, 94 Fed. Cl. 1 (Fed. Cl. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where, despite the destruction of relevant ESI, defendant was able to restore the relevant documents from backup tapes and produce them, but where the metadata was different such that the author of the documents was listed as one person rather than the many who had actually authored them, the court accepted the explanation that the author reflected in restored documents had received each document as an email attachment and saved those documents to her hard drive, thus changing the metadata, and further found that plaintiff made no showing that the documents were otherwise modified and denied the motion for sanctions

Nature of Case: Bid Protest

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Trusz v. USB Realty Investors LLC, 2010 WL 3583064 (D. Conn. Sept. 7, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where plaintiff accused defendant of a ?document dump? in the wake of its production of 4,004,183 pages of documents and where defendants argued that the high volume was a result of plaintiff?s overbroad discovery requests, the court reasoned that the issue could have been avoided had counsel conferred to refine search terms and ordered the parties to confer in good faith to reach agreement regarding reducing the volume of discovery and that absent agreement, a special master would be appointed

Nature of Case: Claims arising from alleged concealment of overvaluing real estate investments

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Fleming v. Escort, Inc., 2010 WL 3833995 (D. Idaho Sept. 24, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where plaintiff sought the unredacted source code of defendant?s allegedly infringing products, the court credited plaintiff?s expert testimony that because source code ?generally contains notes by the writer of that code ?that explain to others who come later what the [writer] of the code was trying to accomplish at that portion of the code??, all of the source code was necessary to ensure his correct understanding of all portions and ordered plaintiff to produce the source code pursuant to the parties protective order; in so holding, court noted that ?the dilemma? of having to produce source court for unrelated products was of defendant?s ?own making? because of its business practice of bundling the source code for all of its products together

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Source code

State v. Absher, 2010 WL 3860501 (N.C. App. Ct. Oct. 5, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where police department failed to preserve video surveillance footage containing images of the alleged assault at issue despite a specific written request for preservation by defendants? counsel and instead altered the tape to remove significant portions and then destroyed the original, superior court did not err in dismissing the charges against defendants because of the irreparable prejudice caused by the loss of the video tape

Nature of Case: Criminal/Assault

Electronic Data Involved: Video surveillance footage

Catagory:Case Summaries