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
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
The federal district court for the Southern District of New York has issued another ruling (available here) relating to electronic discovery in the ongoing matter of Zubulake v. UBS Warburg.
The court’s most recent decision, issued October 22, 2003, addresses Zubulake’s motion for sanctions against UBS for its failure to preserve missing backup tapes and deleted emails. See Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, LLC, 2003 WL 22410619 (S.D.N.Y.). Although the court established no definitive guidelines regarding when backup tapes must be preserved, the decision discusses this issue at length, describing both situations where the tapes should be preserved, and situations where they need not be preserved.
After considering UBS’s failure to preserve the missing backup tapes and deleted emails, the court declined to grant an adverse inference instruction against UBS, or to impose on UBS the full cost of restoring certain backup tapes, but did order UBS to bear the plaintiff’s costs of re-deposing certain individuals concerning issues raised either by the destruction of evidence or by any newly-produced emails. Read More
Key Insight: Reconsideration of ruling that plaintiffs lacked standing. Expert affidavit shows substantial risk of identity theft and sale of PII and PHI on the dark web, establishing injury-in-fact.
Nature of Case: Class action arising out of a data breach and alleging identity theft.
Electronic Data Involved: Dark web evidence
Keywords: PII and PHI, dark web, identity theft, Joe Church, Digital Shield, X1 Social Discovery
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