Case Summaries – Page 312 – Electronic Discovery Law

Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. v. Akanoc Solutions, Inc., 2008 WL 3200822 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 7, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: District court overruled defendants’ objections to magistrate judge’s order compelling production of certain ESI, rejecting claim that requested discovery was unduly burdensome; although defendants claimed they had more than 1500 servers, court noted that discovery was limited to 67 specific web sites and defendants had offered no evidence to suggest that they could not narrow the number of servers on which responsive content might exist; court ordered parties to meet and confer to agree upon protocol for obtaining the requested discovery

Nature of Case: Contributory and vicarious trademark and copyright infringement claims against internet service providers who host third-party websites on their servers

Electronic Data Involved: Publicly-posted Internet content evidencing offers made of counterfeit Louis Vuitton merchandise and traffic logs evidencing the volume of underlying counterfeit activity, limited to 67 allegedly infringing websites identified by plaintiff

Willeford v. Toys ?R? US-Del., Inc., 895 N.E.2d 83 (Ill. App. Ct. 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Appellate court upheld order of contempt and declined to expand protective order to keep confidential names and contact information of persons involved in falling merchandise accidents where defendant?s challenges of discovery rulings resulted in five year delay, were not in good faith, and information sought to be protected was not the sort that should be covered by a protective order

Nature of Case: Personal injury

Electronic Data Involved: Database

Baxter Healthcare Holding, Inc. v. Fresenius Medical Care Holding, Inc., 2008 WL 4547190 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 10, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Finding each email in string a ?separate communication for which a privilege may or may not be applicable? court rejected defendants? argument of extreme burden and ordered production of ?proper privilege log? identifying required information for each message; court ordered defendants to identify author, recipient, or copyee of redacted documents already in plaintiffs possession finding it ?unreasonable? to require of plaintiffs because defendants were obligated to justify privilege claim

Nature of Case: Patent Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged emails

Naik v. Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharm., Inc., 2008 WL 4866015 (N.D. Ill. Jun. 19, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Court declined to find waiver of privilege where privileged portion of email was inadvertently produced amidst 2,300 pages and where defendant took immediate action to assert privilege, reasserted privilege at deposition, and produced a revised privilege log within five days; court also noted lack of prejudice to plaintiffs

Nature of Case: Wrongful termination

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged email

Opperman v. Allstate N.J. Ins. Co., 2008 WL 5071044 (D.N.J. Nov. 24, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Court granted plaintiffs? request for access to third party?s proprietary software where court determined software and its underlying processes were relevant to plaintiffs? claims and that all less intrusive means to obtain the necessary information had been exhausted; court?s order allowed access to the software by plaintiffs? expert but protected the confidentiality of the information with a protective order that placed limitations on who may access the software and limited the use of the information solely to the litigation

Nature of Case: Challenge to accuracy of insurance company estimates for fire damage

Electronic Data Involved: Proprietary software

Keithley v. Homestore.com, 2008 WL 5234270 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 15, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Rejecting each of defendant?s objections, court adopted Report and Recommendation of Magistrate Judge imposing monetary sanctions for discovery violations but did not adopt recommendation for adverse inference instruction because summary judgment in favor of defendant rendered issue moot

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, source code, document retention policies

Llamas v. State, 270 S.W. 3d. 274 (Tex. App. 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Appellate court found no abuse of discretion in trial court?s decision to admit surveillance footage of armed robbery into record after State provided testimony regarding chain of custody and where officer in charge of transferring data to DVD testified DVD contained exact replica of the original footage

Nature of Case: Capital murder

Electronic Data Involved: Surveillance footage

J&M Assocs., Inc. v. Nat?l Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa., 2008 WL 5102246 (S.D. Cal. Dec. 2, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where plaintiff deleted potentially relevant emails despite a duty to preserve, court granted defendants access to plaintiff?s servers to perform electronic recovery of deleted emails; court ordered defendant to retain independent professional to perform recovery at defendants? expense and for recovered emails to be provided directly to plaintiff?s counsel for review and production

Electronic Data Involved: Deleted emails

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

In re Seroquel Prods. Liab. Litig., 2008 WL 508391 (M.D. Fla. Feb. 21, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Court issued a number of discovery rulings, among them an order requiring AstraZeneca to produce communications between members of the Benefit/Risk Team for Seroquel; court reasoned: “Given the scope of this litigation, requiring a limited number (even 100) of known individuals to search for significant information is not an undue burden.”

Nature of Case: Drug product liability

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Catagory:Case Summaries