Case Summaries – Page 408 – Electronic Discovery Law

MasterCard Int’l v. Moulton, 2004 WL 1393992 (S.D.N.Y. June 22, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Finding no bad faith in defendant’s failure to preserve email since defendants simply persevered in their normal document retention practices, court nonetheless ruled that plaintiff would be allowed to prove the facts reflecting the non-retention of email and argue to the trier of fact that this destruction of evidence, in addition to other proof offered at trial, warranted certain inferences

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email

OpenTV v. Liberate Tech., 219 F.R.D. 474 (N.D. Cal. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Applying Zubulake balancing test, court ordered parties to share equally the cost of extracting source code from defendant’s database; however, defendant solely to bear cost of copying source code for production once it is extracted

Nature of Case: Infringement action

Electronic Data Involved: Source code

Propath Services, L.L.P. v. Ameripath, Inc., 2004 WL 2389214 (N.D. Tex. Oct. 21, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court entered preliminary injunction prohibiting defendants from, among other things, deleting, destroying or altering any document, email or computer drive containing any ProPath or ProPath related information, and required defendants to segregate said items into a confidential file not to be used in their business

Nature of Case: Contract breach, misappropriation of confidential information, breach of fiduciary duty

Electronic Data Involved: Email and other electronic files

Sempra Energy Trading Corp. v. Brown, 2004 WL 2714404 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 30, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Claiming that it had already spent approximately $1.4 million to restore, review and produce email, and may have to expend as much as $3 million more in order to complete the document review and production, nonparty unsuccessfully attempted to avoid compliance with discovery orders in state proceeding by seeking injunctive and declaratory relief in federal court

Nature of Case: Action for declaratory and injunctive relief

Electronic Data Involved: Email stored on backup tapes

Symantec Corp. v. McAfee Assoc., Inc., 1998 WL 740798 (N.D. Cal. June 9, 1998)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Where defendants admitted to removing customer sales information from sales representatives’ computers by means of “delete and scrub” utilities in response to plaintiff’s claim that such material constituted trade secrets, and retained copies of deleted information, court granted unopposed motion for preliminary injunction enjoining defendant from distributing customer sales information and recalling and impounding customer sales information database

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement; plaintiff also alleged that defendant obtained private customer sales information from plaintiff’s former sales representative

Electronic Data Involved: Database containing customer sales information

United States v. Koch Ind., Inc., 197 F.R.D. 463 (N.D. Okl. 1998)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendant was negligent in failing to determine which computer tapes in tape library contained information relevant to imminent and ongoing litigation and in failing to communicate clear guidelines regarding preservation of information to data processing personnel and tape librarian; no adverse inference, but plaintiff could inform jury about destruction of tapes and impact on plaintiff’s proof

Nature of Case: Action under False Claims Act

Electronic Data Involved: Computer tapes

Williams v. Saint-Gobain Corp., 53 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 360, 2002 WL 1477618 (W.D.N.Y. June 28, 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendant’s production of email five days before trial was to begin did not warrant sanctions, where emails were not produced previously because defendant had changed email systems (thus rendering all previous emails irretrievable) and where email was produced as soon as it was discovered during trial prep of witness; discovery deadline extended

Nature of Case: Wrongful termination (age discrimination)

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Harvey v. Allstate Ins. Co., 2004 WL 3142228 (W.D. Tenn. Aug. 23, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court ordered defendant to supplement interrogatory response where deposition testimony showed that some of the information sought in the interrogatory could be obtained from a simple computer operation

Nature of Case: Insured alleged that insurer’s denial of claim violated 42 U.S.C. ? 1981

Electronic Data Involved: Computerized claim file information

ABC Health Servs., Inc. v. IBM Corp., 158 F.R.D. 180 (S.D. Ga. 1994)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff?s motion to dismiss IBM’s counterclaims as sanction for deletion of computer files, since erasure was done before suit was filed and did not amount to willful or bad faith disregard of discovery order or discovery request; court indicated that a jury instruction regarding destruction of documents may be an appropriate lesser sanction

Nature of Case: Breach of contract for development of software

Electronic Data Involved: Computer files containing both project-related documents and purely personal documents

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

Catagory:Case Summaries