Key Insight: Court denied defense motion for dismissal based on plaintiff’s failure to preserve laptop’s hard drive, since there was no evidence that plaintiff’s conduct was intentional or in bad faith — plaintiff explained that hard drive was replaced after laptop crashed and before defendant’s discovery requests were received
Nature of Case: Breach of contract
Electronic Data Involved: Laptop hard drive
Key Insight: State appellate court found no error in trial court’s order denying plaintiff’s motion to compel production of certain hard drives of defendant for the purpose of allowing an expert to determine whether they contained relevant email, since discovery requests at issue made no mention of hard drives
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Email, hard drives
Key Insight: District court upheld magistrate judge’s January 22, 2007 memorandum order and related protective order, as such orders were not clearly erroneous or contrary to law
Nature of Case: Design firm sued former vice president under Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Electronic Data Involved: Former employee’s home computer and new work computer
Key Insight: Where defendant received from an anonymous source a copy of an email sent by plaintiff which had not been produced by plaintiff in discovery, court denied defendant’s motion for access to plaintiff’s computer but stated that defendant would be permitted to depose plaintiff about items in his possession and items no longer in his possession, and court would be willing to entertain renewed motion depending on the testimony obtained
Nature of Case: Student who was suspended and denied re-admission alleged discrimination claims
Electronic Data Involved: Plaintiff’s personal computer
Key Insight: Where defendants failed to produce email, failed to properly preserve email, and had not complied with orders to timely produce discovery, nor paid plaintiffs’ costs of bringing discovery motions as ordered nor paid sanctions to court as directed, and repeatedly failed to follow local rules with respect to timely and properly filing documents, court granted plaintiff’s motion for case dispositive sanctions; trial would be on the issue of damages only, and only plaintiff’s evidence would be admitted given defendants’ failure to file witness or exhibit lists
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Court rejected non-party’s claim that it was entitled to recover full amount of fees expended to retrieve, identify and review 25 project files sought by plaintiffs (estimated to be $28,950, including $18,750 in attorneys fees for 50 hours of review), since non-party should have reasonably anticipated being involved in the discovery process of subsequent litigation concerning the marketing/prescribing behavior it studied, the cost could be borne by the non-party as overhead, and cost was less than four fifths (4/5) of one percent of the revenue the non-party generated from work on Seroquel products
Nature of Case: Drug product liability class action
Electronic Data Involved: 25 electronically-maintained project files relating to market research that non-party Harris performed on behalf of AstraZeneca with respect to Seroquel
Key Insight: Magistrate judge ordered plaintiff to produce responsive emails, and if emails had been deleted, to produce for inspection her computer hard drive from which those emails were sent to allow defendants to use services of computer forensic specialist, if necessary, to retrieve them; request for sanctions denied without prejudice to a further request for a ?negative inference instruction? to be determined by trial judge
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Deleted email, hard drive of plaintiff’s personal computer
Key Insight: Where accounting information was relevant to plaintiffs’ contention that defendants’ corporate form should be disregarded, court ruled that QuickBooks accounting data file for relevant time period be copied to CD and produced to plaintiffs in that form
Nature of Case: Breach of contract, unjust enrichment
Electronic Data Involved: QuickBooks accounting data file
Key Insight: Trial court did not abuse its discretion by declining to sanction GM for destruction of “superfluous and irrelevant computer evidence” on computer hard drive, since the information on the hard drive would not have increased or decreased the probability that plaintiff was involved in sending the inappropriate emails at issue in the case, and emails had already been discovered
Nature of Case: Wrongful discharge
Electronic Data Involved: Computer hard drive
Key Insight: Court denied defendant?s post-trial motion for reimbursement of $292,000 incurred to preserve large volume of ESI as demanded by plaintiff at outset of litigation, finding that plaintiffs? demand, while arguably unreasonable, was not so abusive as to warrant sanctions; court noted that, where plaintiff demanded preservation of huge amounts of ESI and parties were not able to agree on narrowed scope of information to be preserved, defendant, ?like all parties, was left to make a reasonable judgment about what information must be preserved?
Nature of Case: Putative class action under Fair Credit Reporting Act
Electronic Data Involved: Information in all databases maintained by defendant, any and all e-mail, and other broad categories of information
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