Key Insight: Magistrate granted various discovery sanctions requested by plaintiff, including monetary sanctions and a jury instruction adverse to defendants based on destruction and non-production of email
Nature of Case: Patent infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: District court did not abuse its discretion in ruling that an email was adequately authenticated by, among other things, the presence of defendant?s email address and the context and content of the email and was ?within its discretion? to deny hearsay objections to the introduction of the email because it was both an admission by a party AND was not hearsay in the first place where it was admitted to show the correspondents?? ?relationship and custom of communicating by e-mail.?
Nature of Case: Fraud, false statements to a federal agency, and obstruction of a federal investigation
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Motion for sanctions for destruction of email denied since plaintiff failed to follow procedure set forth in court’s prior order which would have required plaintiff to file a petition seeking the appointment of a computer forensics expert, and instead waited over seven months to bring the issue to the court in the form of a motion for sanctions
Nature of Case: Patent infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Deleted email
Key Insight: District Court affirmed sanctions award of $147,635.74 imposed by Bankruptcy Court under its inherent powers on law firm representing estate, where among other things, law firm “got caught time and time again with having made misrepresentations about the completeness of what was provided,” even after the evidence indicated otherwise and after additional documents continued to be found
Nature of Case: Bankruptcy proceeding
Electronic Data Involved: Email and documents in electronic format
Key Insight: Defendant’s duty to preserve source code arose no later than service of complaint, and its subsequent destruction of source code warranted default judgment on issue of liability; even assuming that maintenance of only a single, updated version of source code was, in other circumstances, a bona fide business practice, any destruction of versions of the code after service of complaint could not be excused as a bona fide business practice
Nature of Case: Copyright infringement, unfair competition, breach of computer software agreement
Electronic Data Involved: Source code
Key Insight: Where defendant did not timely object to document requests and belated privilege log was inadequate, court determined that attorney-client privilege and work product protection had been waived and ordered production
Nature of Case: Insurance coverage
Electronic Data Involved: Insurer’s computerized “Z-note” file contents related to particular claim
Key Insight: Plaintiffs’ motion for on-site inspection of computer records granted and defendant ordered to pay all plaintiffs’ expenses and legal fees unnecessarily expended due to defendant’s failure to make an accurate disclosure of its computer capabilities in December 1998
Nature of Case: Trademark infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Computerized information re purchase of goods bearing plaintiffs’ trademarks
Key Insight: No abuse of discretion to dismiss suit with prejudice and impose sanctions against plaintiff under Rule 11, where it was determined that plaintiff had relied on falsified email and letters to support her discrimination claims
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination based on race, sex and ethnic origin
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Trial court erred in not dismissing defendants’ counterclaim and third party complaint as sanction for spoliation of evidence — contrary to court’s orders, defendants purged databases and produced backup tapes that were compromised and unusable
Nature of Case: Plaintiff sought declaratory judgment that it was not in default of license agreement
Electronic Data Involved: Computer databases and backup tapes
Key Insight: Court ordered cost-shifting (50/50) where plaintiff sought information about Verizon’s past and present customers even though material was not “inaccessible” under Zubulake analysis, since data was available in Verizon’s computer databases or archives
Nature of Case: Breach of contract and related claims
Electronic Data Involved: Computerized customer data
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