Case Summaries – Page 407 – Electronic Discovery Law

Invision Media Communications, Inc. v. Fed. Ins. Co., 2004 WL 396037 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 2, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Plaintiff?s discovery misconduct, including disregard of discovery obligations, misleading statements regarding existence and location of evidence and failure to make reasonable inquiries, warranted sanctions in the form of costs and reasonable attorneys? fees expended by defendant in connection with sanctions motion and certain discovery events

Nature of Case: Insurance coverage

Electronic Data Involved: Email and hard drives

Lexis-Nexis v. Beer, 41 F. Supp. 2d 950 (D. Minn. 1999)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court granted motion for monetary sanctions against defendant for violating TRO by failing to return proprietary information and data to plaintiff, but reserved judgment on amount of award pending further proceedings

Nature of Case: Employer sued former employee for misappropriation of trade secrets and related torts

Electronic Data Involved: Database containing sales and customer information, email, laptop, zip disk

Metro. Opera Ass’n, Inc. v. Local 100, 332 F. Supp. 2d 667 (S.D.N.Y. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Judge denied defendants’ motion to disqualify him from further proceedings, which argued that judge’s appearance at electronic discovery CLE, where he gave presentation entitled “How a Judge Expects You To Handle Electronic Records in Discovery” and discussed the case, had the appearance of partiality

Nature of Case: Opera company sued union

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic discovery CLE presentation by judge

In re Plastics Additives Antitrust Litig., 2004 WL 2743591 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 29, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Sustaining defendants’ objections to plaintiff’s proposed scheduling order, court imposed reciprocal burdens on parties to produce transactional data in electronic format, to the extent reasonably feasible, but removed provision that had required defendants to make available “documentation and computer personnel” to help plaintiffs understand that data, stating parties were free to agree to such a provision but the court would not impose one

Nature of Case: Antitrust

Electronic Data Involved: Transactional data

RKI, Inc. v. Grimes, 177 F. Supp. 2d 859 (N.D. Ill. 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court granted emergency motion to compel, requiring defendants to appear for deposition and produce computers for inspection by plaintiff’s computer forensics expert; at subsequent bench trial, in light of defendants’ deletion of data from computers after litigation commenced, repeated defragmentation of hard drives prior to court-ordered inspections, and decision not to offer any testimony to explain same, court drew adverse inference; court awarded plaintiff $100,000 as royalty for defendants’ unauthorized use of trade secrets, and $150,000 in punitive damages for the willful and malicious misappropriation of trade secrets and attempted cover-up

Nature of Case: Manufacturer sued former employee and competitor for misappropriation of trade secrets and related torts

Electronic Data Involved: Software and databases containing sales and customer information

Star Tribune v. Minn. Twins P’ship, 659 N.W.2d 287 (Minn. Ct. App. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court’s rejection of media’s request for access to discovery documents produced by parties in litigation and covered by protective order was not abuse of discretion; CD-ROM was not filed with court, and thus was not subject to common law right of access

Nature of Case: Media companies brought motion to intervene and modify protective order in third party litigation, seeking access to materials produced in discovery

Electronic Data Involved: CD-ROM containing 9,000 documents

Toftely v. Qwest Communications Corp., 2003 WL 1908022 (Minn. Ct. App. Apr. 22, 2003) (Unpublished)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Qwest general counsel sent urgent/confidential email to managers notifying them of “legal hold” related to pending SEC investigation and advising about the need to preserve certain categories of documents. The email contained a hidden “tracer” that gave notice whenever someone forwarded the email outside the Qwest network. Qwest discharged all employees who forwarded the email to outsiders on grounds of employment misconduct; subsequent denial of unemployment benefits was affirmed.

Nature of Case: Discharged employee appealed denial of unemployment benefits

Electronic Data Involved: Email containing tracer

US Greenfiber v. Brooks, 2002 WL 31834009 (W.D. La. Oct. 25, 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Preliminary injunction prohibiting former employee from using or disclosing any of employer’s business information and directing her to return employer’s property, equipment, documents and business and quality control records (including computer records)

Nature of Case: Employer sued former employee for breach of fiduciary duty and related torts

Electronic Data Involved: Emails and computer records

York v. Hartford Underwriters Ins. Co., 2002 WL 31465306 (N.D. Okla. Nov. 4, 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendant required to produce documents regarding use of software program and designate Rule 30(b)(6) witness to testify about defendant’s use of software program; defendant allowed to submit protective order “to safeguard divulgence of such information to third parties”

Nature of Case: Insurance bad faith

Electronic Data Involved: Colossus computer software program used by insurance industry to evaluate claims

Advantacare Health Partners, LP v. Access IV, 2004 WL 1837997 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 17, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court denied motion for default judgment but granted motion for an adverse inference instruction and $20,000 in monetary sanctions where, in advance of court-ordered inspection, defendants deleted from their computers numerous electronic files which had been copied from former employer’s computer systems prior to their resignations, and, after the inspection, defendants failed to comply with court’s order that they delete all of plaintiffs’ files from their computers

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets and related torts

Electronic Data Involved: Proprietary information in electronic form

Catagory:Case Summaries