Case Summaries – Page 398 – Electronic Discovery Law

GE Harris Ry. Elecs., LLC v. Westinghouse Air Brake Co., 2004 WL 5702740 (D. Del. Mar. 29, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court declined to impose terminating sanctions and instead ordered an adverse inference sanction against defendant for employee?s intentional spoliation of electronic evidence where the destruction was motivated by an intent to eliminate incriminating evidence but where the prejudice was minimal in light of plaintiff?s ability to obtain copies of the deleted evidence by other means

Nature of Case: Patent infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, emails

Hagemeyer N. Am., Inc. v. Gateway Data Sci. Corp., 222 F.R.D. 594 (E.D. Wis. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Adopting Zubulake and McPeek approaches, court ordered defendant to restore a sampling of five backup tapes selected by the plaintiff; parties would thereafter be required to make additional submissions addressing whether the burden or expense of satisfying the entire request was proportionate to the likely benefit

Electronic Data Involved: Email stored on backup tapes

BASF Fina Petrochemicals Ltd. P’ship v. H.B. Zachry Co., 2004 WL 2612835 (Tex. App. Nov. 18, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court awarded non-party its costs of production, but ruled that non-party was not entitled, under either Tex. R. Civ. P. 205.3 or 176.7, to recover attorneys’ fees incurred in responding to subpoena, noting that non-party obtained legal advice to protect its own interests, not to facilitate compliance with subpoena

Nature of Case: Construction litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic data

Ciba-Geigy Corp. v. Sandoz, Ltd., 916 F. Supp. 404 (D.N.J. 1995)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Production of documents from litigation database without first conducting privilege review constituted inexcusable neglect and waived attorney-client privilege; inadvertent disclosure clause in governing protective order did not apply

Nature of Case: Environmental litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Memorandum selected from litigation database

Cummings v. Gen. Motors Corp., 365 F.3d 944 (10th Cir. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: No abuse of discretion to deny motion to compel access to GM’s databases and grant protective order to GM where plaintiffs’ proposed computer database searches were overly broad in scope, duplicative of prior requests and unduly burdensome

Nature of Case: Personal injury

Electronic Data Involved: Database

Gambale v. Deutsche Bank Ag, 2002 WL 31655326 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 21, 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendants ordered to provide an affidavit explaining steps taken to search paper and electronic files for responsive documents and feasibility and cost of retrieving certain emails. Plaintiff would then have option of consenting to protocol set forth in Rowe Entertainment as modified by Murphy Oil, or arguing for different protocol by conferring with defendant and submitting a joint letter outlining parties’ respective positions on the issue

Nature of Case: Gender discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Email and electronic files

Hildreth Mfg., LLC v. Semco, Inc., 785 N.E.2d 774 (Ohio Ct. App. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Failure to preserve certain computer hard drives did not warrant sanctions where there was no reasonable possibility that the missing hard drives (which were obtained after protective order was issued) contained evidence of the theft of trade secret information

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets and related torts

Electronic Data Involved: Computer hard drives

Kormendi v. Computer Assoc. Int’l, Inc., 2002 WL 31385832 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 21, 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendant ordered to produce all email messages mentioning plaintiff for certain time period; plaintiff to pay the cost of the email search

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Email

McCurdy Group, LLC v. Am. Biomedical Group, Inc., 9 Fed. Appx. 822, 2001 WL 536974 (10th Cir. May 21, 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendant’s skepticism that plaintiff had not produced copies of all responsive documents did not entitle defendant to conduct physical inspection of plaintiff’s hard drives

Nature of Case: Breach of contract and quantum meruit claim

Electronic Data Involved: Computer and disc drives

Oved & Assocs. Const. Servs., Inc. v. Superior Court, 2003 WL 23028903 (Cal. App. Dec. 30, 2003) (Unpublished)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Petition for writ of mandate denied; based on evidence that a business computer was used for accounting and nothing else, and that there was a risk the hard drive might be purged, trial court acted properly when it ordered the petitioner to produce the computer’s hard drive

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of funds

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drive

Catagory:Case Summaries