Catagory:Case Summaries

Accessdata Corp. v. ALSTE Tech. GMBH, 2010 WL 318477 (D. Utah Jan. 21, 2010)

In this breach of contract case, the court granted plaintiff’s motion to compel and ordered defendant (a German company) to produce responsive third-party, personal data, despite objections that such production would violate German law.  The court also granted plaintiff’s motion to compel the re-production of previously produced electronic discovery where defendant’s initial production did not conform to the requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P. 34.

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Howell Educ. Assoc. MEA/NEA v. Howell Board of Educ., 2010 WL 290515 (Mich. Ct. App. Jan. 26, 2010)

In this “reverse” Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case, the trial court held that personal emails generated by and stored on a public school’s email system were public records subject to FOIA.  Upon plaintiffs’ appeal, the appellate court reversed the trial court and held that such emails were not public records and thus not subject to FOIA.  Moreover, the appellate court concluded that violation of an acceptable use policy barring personal use of an email system – “at least one that does not expressly provide that emails are subject to FOIA” – does not render personal emails subject to FOIA.

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Rodriguez-Torres v. Gov. Dev. Bank of Puerto Rico, 265 F.R.D. 40 (D.P.R. 2010)

In this employment discrimination case, the court found the electronically stored information (“ESI”) requested by the plaintiffs “not reasonably accessible because of the undue burden and cost” and that plaintiffs had failed to show good cause to compel production of the ESI and denied plaintiffs’ motion to compel.

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Pension Comm. of Univ. of Montreal Pension Plan v. Bank of Am. Secs., LLC, 685 F. Supp. 2d 456 (S.D.N.Y. 2010) (Amended Order)

Issued earlier this month, Judge Shira Scheindlin’s opinion in Pension Comm. of Univer. of Montreal Pension Plan v. Bank of Am. Secs., LLC, addresses the issues of parties’ preservation obligations and spoliation in great detail, including detailed and informative discussions of the varying levels of culpability in failing to uphold discovery obligations, the required burdens of proof, and the appropriate remedies upon a finding of spoliation.

The opinion was summed up by Judge Scheindlin in the introduction to her opinion:

By now, it should be abundantly clear that the duty to preserve means what it says and that a failure to preserve records-paper or electronic-and to search in the right places for those records, will inevitably result in the spoliation of evidence.

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Bray & Gillespie Mgmt., LLC v. Lexington Ins. Co., 2009 WL 5218035 (M.D. Fla. Aug. 3, 2009);  Bray & Gillespie Mgmt., LLC v. Lexington Ins. Co., 2010 WL 55595 (M.D. Fla. Jan. 5, 2010)

Following her finding that “[Bray & Gillespie], through counsel, acted willfully and in bad faith in violation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and this court’s orders” by failing to make reasonable efforts to search for and produce documents in response to court orders and by making repeated misrepresentations to the court, among other things, the Magistrate Judge recommended that the plaintiff’s claims be stricken and that the case be dismissed with prejudice.  (For additional details of plaintiff’s discovery abuses, click here to be taken to a summary of a prior opinion in this case.)  On review of that recommendation, the District Court Judge found total dismissal of all the plaintiff’s claims “an excessive remedy” and instead ordered the dismissal of all claims for damages arising from the alleged interruption of business at the Treasure Island Property and for the plaintiff to pay $75,000 to the defendant for expenses incurred in pursuit of its motion for sanctions.

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Starbucks Corp. v. ADT Security Servs., Inc., 2009 WL 4730798 (W.D. Wash. Apr. 30, 2009)

In this recently released opinion written early last year, the defendant, ADT Security Services, Inc. (“ADT”), sought to avoid its obligation to produce archived emails by arguing the emails were not “reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost,” as that term is used in Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(B).  In support of this position, ADT’s Manager of Information Technology, John Mitchell, provided various estimates regarding the potential cost of time and money to restore the requested email.  In response, the plaintiff, Starbucks Corporation (“Starbucks”), provided its own estimates of the potential cost which were significantly lower than those proffered by ADT.  Finding Mitchell had “at every turn, provided exaggerated reasons and exaggerated expenses as to why ADT allegedly cannot and should not be ordered to comply with its discovery obligations,” the court declined to find the information at issue “not reasonably accessible.”  Moreover, the court indicated that even had the information been deemed not reasonably accessible, the court would have found that good cause existed to order the production.  Accordingly, Starbuck’s motion to compel was granted.

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Cornwall v. N. Ohio Surgical Ctr., 2009 WL 5174172 (Ohio. Ct. App. Dec. 31, 2009)

In this wrongful death litigation, the trial court granted plaintiff’s motion to allow his forensic expert to create a mirror image of defendants’ hard drives.  Plaintiff asserted that examination of the drives would reveal evidence of defendants’ willful alteration or deletion of relevant evidence.  The court granted the motion despite defendants’ objections that such access would violate statutory and common law prohibitions against the disclosure of confidential medical information and that such access was not authorized under Fed. R. Civ. P. 34.  Defendants appealed.  On appeal, the order of the trial court was affirmed.

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TR Investors, LLC v. Genger, 2009 WL 4696062 (Del. Ch. Dec. 9, 2009) (Unpublished)

In this case, defendant Arie Genger was held in contempt and found to have intentionally spoliated relevant documents in violation of a court order following his instruction to his personal IT consultant to wipe the unallocated space of his company’s computer system which his consultant then carried out.  Declining to impose terminating sanctions, the court instead ordered that Genger produce 10 documents previously subject to a claim of privilege, that the burden of persuasion as to Genger’s affirmative defenses and counter-claims be raised one level, that Genger was precluded from prevailing on any material factual issue by reason of his testimony alone, and that Genger pay for plaintiffs’ reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses in the amount of $750,000.

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Multiquip, Inc. v. Water Mgmt. Systs., LLC, 2009 WL 4261214 (D. Idaho Nov. 23, 2009)

When responding to an email communication from his attorney, defendant mistakenly sent his message to a third party.  As a result, the email was eventually provided to opposing counsel in the litigation.  Plaintiff’s counsel refused to return the email upon defense counsel’s request and filed a motion for a protective order to which the email was attached.  Defendants then filed a motion to exclude plaintiff’s use of the email.  Defendant David Muhs explained that the mistaken transmission occurred when the autofill feature on his email program supplied the wrong address in place of that of the intended recipient.  Conducting its analysis pursuant to Fed. R. Evid. 502, the court determined that privilege had not been waived.

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G.K. Las Vegas Ltd. P’ship v. Simon Prop. Group, 2009 WL 4283086 (D. Nev. Nov. 30, 2009)

Following a determination that defendants participated in improper ex parte communications with an independent, court-appointed forensic expert and thus destroyed its impartiality, the district court held that defendants had forfeited their right to a forensic examination of plaintiffs’ relevant computer systems and modified its prior order to deny defendants’ motion for spoliation sanctions with prejudice.

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