O?Neill v. City of Shoreline, 240 P.3d 1149 (Wash. 2010)
Key Insight: Metadata is subject to disclosure pursuant to the Public Records Act
Nature of Case: Public Disclosure Act
Electronic Data Involved: Metadata
Reckitt Benckiser, Inc. v. Watson Labs., Inc.-Florida, 2010 WL 4225865 (S.D. Fla. Oct. 21, 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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
Jones v. Comsys IT Partners, Inc., 2010 WL 3002083 (W.D.N.C. July 27, 2010)
Key Insight: Where in response to plaintiff?s motion for a protective order requiring the preservation of relevant emails defendants affirmed they had been preserving relevant evidence and would continue to do so, the court denied plaintiff?s motion as moot
Electronic Data Involved: Emails
Carnegie Mellon Univ. v. Marvell Tech. Group, Ltd., 2010 WL 4337388 (W.D. Pa. Oct. 27, 2010)
Key Insight: Where defendants sought to avoid searching and producing emails and related documents maintained by defendants? CEO and CTO and argued that they had already produced 5.5 million pages and that the information sought was cumulative and therefore imposed an undue burden, the court noted defendants admission that they had not searched or reviewed the materials of the relevant executives and found that plaintiff had shown the likelihood that such a search could lead to the discovery of relevant evidence and ordered the executives? materials to be searched and if responsive, produced
Electronic Data Involved: Executives’ ESI
Wright v. City of Salisbury, 2010 WL 126011 (E.D. Mo. Jan. 7, 2010)
Key Insight: Where plaintiff purposefully arranged a conversation with the mayor, recorded the conversation, preserved the portion relevant to his lawsuit on his website server and then lost the remaining, irrelevant portion as the result of problems with his computer, court denied defendants? motion for spoliation sanctions where defendants failed to establish plaintiff?s bad faith or any prejudice resulting from the loss and where the court found plaintiff?s uncontroverted explanation for the loss ?reasonable and believable?
Nature of Case: Wrongful termination
Electronic Data Involved: Audio tape