Case Summaries – Page 404 – Electronic Discovery Law

U.S. v. Siddiqui, 235 F.3d 1318 (11th Cir. 2000)

Dec 01 2004

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

Aero Products Int’l, Inc. v. Intex Recreation Corp., 2004 WL 417193 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 30, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

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

Brick v. HSBC Bank USA, 2004 WL 1811430 (W.D.N.Y. Aug. 11, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

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

Computer Assoc. Int?l v. Am. Fundware, Inc., 133 F.R.D. 166 (D. Colo. 1990)

Dec 01 2004

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

Farmers Ins. Co., Inc. v. Peterson, 81 P.3d 659 (Okl. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Writ of prohibition issued, vacating lower court’s order requiring defendant to search all of its electronic and hard copy claim files covering three-year period; court suggested alternate approach using statistical sampling technique, but left the particulars of such sampling to parties to litigate in lower court

Nature of Case: Insurance bad faith

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic claim files covering three-year period

GTFM, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, 2000 WL 335558 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 30, 2000)

Dec 01 2004

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

Jimenez v. Madison Area Technical Coll., 321 F.3d 652 (7th Cir. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

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

Long Island Diagnostic Imaging, P.C. v. Stony Brook Diagnostic Assoc., 728 N.Y.S.2d 781 (N.Y. App. Div. 2001)

Dec 01 2004

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

Multitechnology Servs., L.P. v. Verizon Southwest, 2004 WL 1553480 (N.D. Tex. July 12, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

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

Positive Software Solutions, Inc. v. New Century Mortgage Corp., 337 F. Supp. 2d 862 (N.D. Tex. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court ruled, reluctantly, that even though defendant had violated protective order relating to use of subject software and database, the order was not sufficiently clear and definite to be enforced by contempt

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Software and database

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