Case Summaries – Page 361 – Electronic Discovery Law

Super Group Packaging & Distrib. Corp. v. Smurfit Stone Container Corp., 2006 WL 274779 (W.D. Wis. Jan. 27, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: In court’s decision ruling on parties’ respective post-trial motions, court affirmed its prior determination that defendants did not use reasonable efforts to locate responsive emails or provide them to plaintiff, and granted plaintiff’s motion to award $11,310 in sanctions representing plaintiff’s costs and fees expended on the discovery dispute

Nature of Case: Breach of contract, unjust enrichment and related torts

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Washburn v. Lavoie, 437 F.3d 84 (D.C. Cir. 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Magistrate did not err in refusing to order defendants to produce all emails that mentioned plaintiff or plaintiff’s lawsuit, where magistrate did order defendants to produce the emails for in camera inspection and magistrate’s personal review showed that nearly half were devoid of anything bearing upon the litigation and the other half dealt with irrelevant issues such as the costs of litigation, retention of counsel and the need to answer interrogatories

Nature of Case: Defamation

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Performance Chevrolet, Inc. v. Market Scan Info. Sys., Inc., 2006 WL 1042359 (D. Idaho Apr. 18, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court denied parties’ cross-motions for sanctions based upon spoliation; deletion of software files was unauthorized act by an employee of plaintiff 14 months before case was filed and litigation was not yet reasonably foreseeable

Nature of Case: Contract breach and fraud involving leased software

Electronic Data Involved: Software files on computer hard drive

Int’l Sec. Mgmt. Group, Inc. v. Sawyer, 2006 WL 1638537 (M.D. Tenn. June 6, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Where court’s TRO (1) prohibited defendants from destroying relevant documents, materials, information or other property, including electronically stored information and (2) required defendants to immediately return any property of plaintiff in defendants’ possession, custody or control, including electronically stored information, court denied request to convert TRO into preliminary injunction as to (1) because no evidence was presented at the hearing suggesting that defendants had engaged in such unlawful destructive behavior in the past or that they would do so in the future, and as to (2) because defendants had already complied with the TRO requiring such action; court entered preliminary injunction as to other matters

Nature of Case: Breach of employment agreement

Electronic Data Involved: Email and electronic documents

Yancey v. GMC, 2006 WL 2045894 (N.D. Ohio June 26, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court ordered GM to produce “Kentucky Firefighter” and “Dancing Granny” emails if said emails can currently be found on GM’s email system, but GM would not be required to retrieve the emails from outside sources if they were not in GM’s possession; court further ordered that GM produce at its own expense the hard drives of various GM employees requested by plaintiff

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Email and hard drives

Arista Records, LLC v. Tschirhart, 2006 WL 2728927 (W.D. Tex. Aug. 23, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court entered default judgment as discovery sanction where forensic evidence showed that defendant deliberately used ?wiping? software to permanently remove data from her hard drive and stated: “The sanction in the present case is to deter other defendants in similar cases from attempting to destroy or conceal evidence of their wrongdoing.”

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drive

In re Napster, Inc. Copyright Litig., 462 F.Supp.2d 1060 (N.D. Cal. 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Adverse inference and monetary sanctions warranted, but not default judgment, where defendant acknowledged that its personnel routinely deleted emails without regard to whether the deleted emails were relevant to the litigation, but behavior did not constitute a pattern of deliberately deceptive litigation practices and there was evidence that the actual number of emails lost was small

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email

In re Atlantic Int’l Mortg. Co., 352 B.R. 503 (Aug. 2, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Although it concluded that default judgment against former general counsel was not warranted, court found that discovery misconduct of former general counsel and its attorneys bordered on obstruction and awarded trustee its reasonable attorneys fees and costs in pursuing all discovery in the proceeding

Nature of Case: Bankruptcy trustee sued debtor’s former general counsel for breach of fiduciary duty and related claims

Electronic Data Involved: Computer systems and electronic records

Discover Fin. Servs., Inc. v. Visa U.S.A., Inc., 2006 WL 3230157 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 8, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court ruled that American Express would be allowed to conduct a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition to address the topics of Wells Fargo’s document retention, collection and production efforts in the litigation, but that such deposition would be limited to three hours; court further noted: “American Express and Wells Fargo have each declined to produce certain information, for example, the content of their ‘litigation hold’ notices. In such situations, it is unlikely that I would compel one party to produce such information, unless American Express and all of the Bank Defendants stipulate to simultaneous exchange of all their information concerning a given topic.”

Nature of Case: Antitrust

Electronic Data Involved: Legal hold notices

Optowave Co., Ltd. v. Nikitin, 2006 WL 3231422 (M.D. Fla. Nov. 7, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Where, despite repeated warnings not to destroy relevant evidence, defendant allowed another party to reformat hard drives of his employees’ computers without first preserving relevant files contained on computers to be reformatted, resulting in loss of crucial electronic evidence, court found that adverse inference instruction was appropriate sanction

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email and customer files

Catagory:Case Summaries