Case Summaries – Page 330 – Electronic Discovery Law

Polycom, Inc. v. Codian Ltd., 2007 WL 194588 (E.D. Tex. Jan. 22, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Court denied motion to compel production of defendants’ source code in native format to be maintained in confidence at Los Angeles office of plaintiffs’ counsel in light of security concerns and technical support issues raised by defendants, and since defendants had already produced an electronic version of the source code and plaintiffs’ consultants had been inspecting the code for several months at defense counsel’s Palo Alto office; court rejected plaintiff’s argument that current system intruded on plaintiff’s work product

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Source code

Claredi Corp. v. Seebeyond Tech. Corp., 2007 WL 735018 (E.D. Mo. Mar. 8, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Where plaintiff showed that defendant failed to produce hundreds of responsive emails which plaintiff ultimately obtained through third-party discovery, court found defendant’s discovery conduct to be dilatory and inadequate and imposed sanction of $54,000 for plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees, and another $20,000 payable to the court as sanction for unnecessarily prolonging and increasing the expense of the litigation

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email and other electronic documents

United States ex rel. Miller v. Holzmann, 2007 WL 781941 (D.D.C. Mar. 12, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: District court judge adopted magistrate judge’s January 17, 2007 report and recommendation, overruling objections of the parties

Nature of Case: FOIA action

Electronic Data Involved: Hard copy file

Palgut v. City Of Colo. Springs, 2007 WL 1238730 (D. Colo. Apr. 27, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Finding that defendant’s failure to identify certain backup tapes in its initial disclosures was inadvertent and was not intentional, willful, or wanton, court ruled that defendant need not produce such backup tapes because production would be unduly burdensome and not reasonably calculated to lead to relevant information; court further found that inadvertent disclosures of protected work product by each of the parties did not effect waiver and prohibited defendant from using or referring to any ?embedded data? contained in plaintiff?s discovery requests and responses

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Backup tapes and embedded data

Jacobs v. Scribner, 2007 WL 1994235 (E.D. Cal. July 5, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Noting that a motion to preserve evidence requires court to consider: 1) level of concern for the continuing existence and maintenance of the integrity of the evidence in question in the absence of a preservation order; 2) any irreparable harm likely to result to party seeking preservation absent such an order; and 3) capability of individual or entity to maintain the evidence sought to be preserved, not only as to the evidence’s original form, condition or contents, but also the physical, spatial and financial burdens created by ordering the evidence preservation, court denied (without prejudice) motion for entry of preservation order as premature since defendants had not yet appeared

Nature of Case: Prisoner brought civil rights action

Electronic Data Involved: Videotaped interviews relevant to plaintiff’s claims

Healthcare Advocates, Inc. v. Harding, Earley, Follmer & Frailey, 497 F.Supp.2d 627 (E.D. Pa. 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Spoliation sanctions were not warranted for defendant’s failure to preserve copies of screenshots that may have been automatically stored in temporary cache files of defendant’s computers, since plaintiff’s counsel’s preservation letter said nothing about preserving temporary cache files, defendant had no reason to believe such files were relevant, files were deleted automatically and not through any affirmative action by defendant, defendant produced forensic images of its hard drives, and plaintiff established little if any prejudice from loss of cache files

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement and violations of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act

Electronic Data Involved: Copies of archived website screenshots automatically stored in temporary cache files of defendant’s computers

Gupta v. Walt Disney World Co., 2007 WL 4165934 (11th Cir. Nov. 27, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: District court did not abuse its discretion when it denied, without holding an evidentiary hearing, plaintiff?s motion to compel discovery about work schedules that plaintiff alleged were forged, where plaintiff provided no support for his allegation that Walt Disney removed his name from the work schedules produced and Walt Disney presented evidence that records produced were copies of electronically maintained records, kept in the usual course of business, and were printed off the computer in the form in which they were maintained

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Work schedules

3M Co. v. Kanbar, 2007 WL 2972921 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 10, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Where responsive emails which had been inadvertently omitted from initial production as a result of human error in manual search were promptly produced after being mentioned in deposition, court ordered defendant to submit a declaration certifying that all non-privileged documents had been produced and detailing what defendants and their employees did to ensure a complete production

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Agassi Enters., Inc. v. Target Corp., 2007 WL 4441195 (D. Nev. Dec. 11, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Granting preliminary injunction, court further ordered defendant to “preserve all documents and other evidence (including, but not limited to, electronic documents such as email relating to its use of the AGASSI name . . .” and, within 30 days of the order, to file and serve a report detailing the manner and form in which Target complied with the preliminary injunction

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic documents, email

Stroupe v. Wal-Mart Stores East, L.P., 2007 WL 3223224 (E.D. Va. Oct. 29, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Adverse inference instruction not warranted for defendant’s routine destruction of surveillance videotapes created on date of incident; defendant presented evidence that there was no videotape that depicted the subject area where the incident occurred and plaintiff did not show that destroyed videotapes contained any images or information relevant to any issue at trial

Nature of Case: Personal injury

Electronic Data Involved: Surveillance videotapes

Catagory:Case Summaries