Case Summaries – Page 338 – Electronic Discovery Law

Gragg v. Int’l Mgmt. Group, 2007 WL 1074894 (N.D.N.Y. Apr. 5, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: After weighing the four factors identified as relevant under the federal common law of waiver, and particularly given the casual nature of defendants’ efforts to insure against inadvertent disclosure, court found that inadvertent production of four privileged emails (of 200 total produced on CD-ROM) effected limited waiver; plaintiff’s counsel would be permitted to keep the privileged emails and to utilize them freely in connection with the pending litigation

Nature of Case: Breach of contract and fraud

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged emails

Heartland Surgical Specialty Hosp., LLC v. Midwest Div., Inc., 2007 WL 2122437 (D. Kan. July 20, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Although court found it “bothersome” that it no attempt at all was made by some of the founders to search, even on a random basis, their personal or office emails, balancing the burden on the founders of conducting full email searches of their non-@hssh.org email accounts against the likelihood that such searches would recover few, if any, additional documents not already produced by Heartland, court declined to require founders to conduct any searches of their personal email accounts in responding to subpoenas

Nature of Case: Antitrust and tortious interference litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Personal email accounts of plaintiff’s founders

Doe v. Morey Charter Sch., 2007 WL 2331864 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 14, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: District court overruled plaintiff’s objections to magistrate judge’s order denying in part motion to compel since order was not clearly erroneous; although plaintiff argued that more material should have been produced, defendants represented that they had produced everything and magistrate judge noted that both sides’ counsel had access to mirror images of hard drives containing the requested data which had been seized in police investigation

Nature of Case: Allegations of sexual abuse and harrassment by former elementary school teacher

Electronic Data Involved: Email and other ESI

In re Hawaiian Airlines, Inc., 2007 WL 3172642 (Bankr. D. Haw. Oct. 30, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Finding that Mesa?s CFO deleted files that Mesa had duty to preserve, used special software to wipe hard drives and changed computer’s clock in an attempt to conceal what he had done, and that Mesa could have taken reasonable, inexpensive and non-burdensome steps that would have prevented or mitigated the consequences of CFO’s destruction of evidence, court concluded that adverse inference was appropriate and made certain findings of fact which were binding and conclusive for all purposes in the case

Nature of Case: Airline undergoing reorganization alleged that prospective investor (Mesa) breached confidentiality agreement and misused confidential information

Electronic Data Involved: Confidential information stored on secure website

Martinez v. Gen. Motors Corp., 2007 WL 1429632 (Mich. Ct. App. May 15, 2007) (Unpublished opinion)

Dec 01 2007

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

Paul v. USIS Commercial Servs., Inc.Slip Copy, 2007 WL 2727222 (D. Colo. Sept. 17, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

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

Citizens for Consumers v. Abbott Labs., 2007 WL 7293758 (D. Mass. Mar. 14, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Where plaintiff Nevada admitted its negligence in failing to institute a litigation hold which resulted in the loss of information (which the court stated was ?the same as destroying them?) and where the loss was prejudicial to the defendants because of their inability to discovery ?marginalia or annotations? or introduce Nevada?s copies of the documents, among other things, the court granted defendants? request to establish certain facts for purposes of the litigation

Nature of Case: Claims that defendants defrauded Nevada by manipulating average wholesale prices of prescription drugs

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Sharma v. Vinmar Int’l, Ltd., 2007 WL 177691 (Tex. App. Jan. 25, 2007) (Not yet released for publication)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Appellate court affirmed trial court’s order granting temporary injunction protecting Vinmar’s trade secrets; evidence at hearing included testimony of neutral forensic computer analyst jointly hired by the parties pursuant to court order, who examined former employees? computers and located some 321,000 “hits” using keyword search “Vinmar,” which expert said translated into thousands of Vinmar documents on those computers, and found indications of possible spoliation

Nature of Case: Chemical trading company sued former employees to enforce confidentiality and non-compete agreements

Electronic Data Involved: Proprietary information, spreadsheets

JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. v. Neovi, Inc., 2007 WL 781648 (S.D. Ohio Mar. 12, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Court awarded $22,371 in sanctions representing plaintiff’s reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred in connection with earlier motion to compel that court granted on November 14, 2006; court further ordered that plaintiff’s second motion to compel relating to the same issues would be set for hearing

Nature of Case: UCC claims arising from defendant’s Internet-based check service

Electronic Data Involved: Databases

Perez-Farias v. Global Horizons, Inc., 2007 WL 991747 (E.D. Wash. Mar. 30, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Court denied defendants’ FRCP 60(b) motion for relief from discovery orders, and ordered defendants to comply with prior orders and, among other things, produce certain database in native format, and produce requested email and Excel spreadsheet

Nature of Case: Class action brought by farm workers

Electronic Data Involved: Database, email and spreadsheet

Catagory:Case Summaries