Case Summaries – Page 303 – Electronic Discovery Law

Option One Mortg. Corp. v. Universal Mortg. Group, Inc., 2008 WL 6928158 (D.S.C. Aug. 27, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Despite indicating concern regarding the cross-claim plaintiff?s deletion of employees? emails after firing them for inappropriate accounting, the court denied plaintiff?s motion for spoliation sanctions where plaintiff failed to identify evidence indicating that the emails would have contained relevant evidence and where fact discovery had been closed for more than a year and plaintiff ?appear[ed] to have presented what it view[ed] as a quite complete theory of the case using the voluminous evidence? available to it

Electronic Data Involved: Emails of fired employees

Koch Foods of Ala. LLC v. Gen. Elec. Capital Corp., 531 F.Supp.2d 1318 (M.D. Ala. 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Concluding that, if the Alabama Supreme Court were to confront the issue of inadvertent waiver, it would likely adopt more comprehensive and sensitive totality-of-the-circumstances analysis, district court upheld magistrate judge?s ruling that plaintiff?s inadvertent production of privileged email among 3,758 pages of documents did not effect waiver

Nature of Case: Dispute over ownership of certain poultry processing equipment

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged email

Ingoglia v. Barnes & Noble Coll. Booksellers, Inc., 852 N.Y.S.2d 337 (N.Y. App. Div. 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Appellate court reversed trial court?s denial of motion to dismiss complaint as sanction for spoliation, and granted motion to dismiss, where defendant’s expert found that numerous files, images, and folders, as well as some history of the plaintiff’s internet usage had been deleted between date defendant demanded inspection of plaintiff’s computer and date of inspection, and evidence showed that defendant suffered severe prejudice

Nature of Case: Defamation

Electronic Data Involved: Files on plaintiff’s home computer

U & I Corp. v. Advanced Med. Design, Inc., 251 F.R.D. 667 (M.D. Fla. 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where plaintiff abused discovery process by, among other things, failing to produce email attachments and belatedly advising defendant and court that certain emails were unrecoverable, court imposed monetary sanctions against plaintiff and granted request for limited inspection of computer hard drives used by certain of plaintiff’s employees to be conducted by independent forensic examiner

Nature of Case: Breach of contract, account stated, open account, and unjust enrichment

Electronic Data Involved: Computer hard drives of plaintiff’s employees

Melcher v. Apollo Med. Fund Mgmt. L.L.C., 859 N.Y.S.2d 160 (N.Y. App. Div. 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where there was no proof that plaintiff intentionally destroyed or withheld evidence, plaintiff’s assistant testified that she searched his computers, and there was an adequate explanation for non-production of two items of correspondence, appellate court found trial court had improperly directed the cloning of plaintiff’s computer hard drives and reversed lower court’s order

Nature of Case: Breach of fiduciary duty

Electronic Data Involved: Computer hard drives

WIREdata, Inc. v. Village of Sussex, 751 N.W.2d 736 (Wis. 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Wisconsin Supreme Court disagreed with certain of the court of appeals’ specific holdings, including: that municipalities denied open records requests of WIREdata and, thus, violated open records law; that PDFs were insufficient to comply with such open records requests; and that open records law required access to computerized database; decision of court of appeals reversed in part and affirmed in part, and cases remanded to trial courts

Nature of Case: Company sued municipalities under Wisconsin’s Open Records Law

Electronic Data Involved: Database containing property assessment records

Dean v. New Werner Holding Co., Inc., 2008 WL 2560707 (D. Kan. June 26, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where defendant had nearly six months to review and accumulate responsive ESI, and represented to court that it intended to produce responsive ESI but provided no date for such production, court ordered defendant to produce ESI within 30 days of court?s order

Nature of Case: Personal injury product liability

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Montgomery v. eTreppid Techs., LLC., 2008 WL 2277118 (D. Nev. May 29, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where neither party would be able to conclusively prove ownership of disputed technology without analysis of source code, court concluded that documents related to source code and other technology plaintiff claimed as trade secret were ?reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence? and ordered plaintiff to produce responsive documents and ESI

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, conversion, breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Source code and related technology

Barrett v. Ambient Pressure Diving, Ltd., 2008 WL 4280360 (D.N.H. Sept. 16, 2008) (Unpublished)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Sanction of dismissal not warranted where data stored on dive computers was lost when it could no longer be downloaded after one year, since plaintiff did not engage in deliberate destruction, she did not know whether data was helpful or hurtful to her case because she had not seen it, and she had not known that data would automatically become unavailable for download after one year; defendant?s entitlement to alternative relief to be decided at trial; court further granted plaintiff?s motion for summary judgment dismissing defendant?s counterclaims for ?fraud on the court? and ?spoliation of evidence?

Nature of Case: Negligence, product liability, wrongful death

Electronic Data Involved: Dive information stored on VR3 dive computers

Musarra v. Digital Dish, Inc., 2008 WL 4758699 (D. Ohio Oct. 30, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where non-party indicated inability to perform electronic search of subpoenaed communication logs and estimated more than 100 hours of manual searching to respond and where subpoenaed information exceeded relevant scope of claims, court declined to impose ?unreasonable burden? on non-party and denied motion to compel; where identification and production of subpoenaed email would result in ?massive expense? but where plaintiffs offered to limit their request to a sampling, court decline to rule pending non-party?s response

Nature of Case: Wage and hour employment case

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, email

Catagory:Case Summaries