Key Insight: statute of limitations, proportionality
Nature of Case: copyright infringement
Electronic Data Involved: financial information
Keywords: meeting of the minds, statute of limitations, undue burden, amount in controversy
Key Insight: scope of discovery
Nature of Case: sexual harassment and retaliation under Title VII
Electronic Data Involved: authorization for medical records and access to social media accounts
Keywords: social media accounts, authorization for medical records, emotional distress
Key Insight: Spoliation. Court ordered discovery to determine if failure to preserve relevant evidence, and if so, whether 37(e) sanctions are warranted.
Nature of Case: civil action under 42 U.S.C. s. 1983
Electronic Data Involved: prisoner surveillance video
Keywords: Spoliation, failure to preserve relevant evidence.
Key Insight: Methodologies behind TAR are privileged (especially the seed set), the court may also perform in camera review to determine the competency of TAR if necessary, poor TAR practices may allow opposing counsel to set parameters
Nature of Case: Fair Housing Act
Electronic Data Involved: Electronic documents
Keywords: TAR, FHA, discrimination, predictive coding, in camera review
Key Insight: relevancy
Nature of Case: breach of contract, trademark infringement, false advertisement, unfair and deceptive trade practices
Electronic Data Involved: electronic documents
Keywords: relevance, broadly construed, breach of warranty
Key Insight: spoliation sanctions
Nature of Case: breach of contract
Electronic Data Involved: e-mails, electronic document
Keywords: spoliation, adverse inference, intent to deprive, 37(e)(2), prejudice 37(e)(1)
IDC Fin. Pub., Inc. v. Bonddesk Grp., LLC, No. 15-cv-1085-pp, 2017 WL 4863202 (E.D. Wis. Oct. 26, 2017)
In this case, the court granted Plaintiff’s motion to compel production of over 600 documents previously produced with extensive non-responsive redactions applied. Defendants argued that the redactions were necessary to protect confidential business information that was not relevant to the underlying dispute and cited In re Takata Airbag Prods. Liab. Litig., 14-24009-CV-MORENO, 2016 WL 1460143 (S.D. Fla. Feb. 24, 2016), in support of their position. In Takata, the court allowed certain non-responsive redactions “because of its concern that the documents contained competitively sensitive materials that may have been exposed to the public, despite protective orders.” In the present case, the court cited Burris v. Versa Prods., Inc., No. 07-3938 (JRT/JJK), 2013 WL 608742 (D. Minn. Feb. 19, 2013) for the propositions that non-responsive redactions are not explicitly supported by the federal rules and that allowing such redactions has the potential for abuse, where parties would be incentivized to “hide as much as they dare.” The court further reasoned that Defendants did not assert any privilege or provide a “compelling reason” for their “extensive” redactions and that they failed to explain why the existing protective order did not provide adequate protection. Thus, the court concluded that it “[did] not see a compelling reason to alter the traditionally broad discovery allowed by the rules by letting the defendants unilaterally redact large portions of their responsive documents on relevance grounds” and granted Plaintiff’s motion to compel.
A copy of the court’s brief order is available here.
Key Insight: Defendant had moved business documents to personal dropbox. when terminated, these were deleted, but potentially restored. Plaintiff wanted re-access to confirm deletion. Defendant moved for dismissal and was denied as Plaintiff had plead enough facts to indicate documents still possibly available to Defendant.
Nature of Case: Breach of Contract; Conversion; Misappropriation of Trade Secrets
Electronic Data Involved: Personal Dropbox Containing Business Documents
Keywords: Motion to Dismiss; Access after employment
Key Insight: All communications between a company’s employees and its counsel are not per se privileged
Nature of Case: Workplace discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Communications between counsel and others inside the company
Keywords: manifest purpose, per se privilege
Key Insight: was there a duty to preserve, were reasonable steps taken to avoid loss of data, can lost data be restored or replaced, was other party prejudiced by loss
Nature of Case: employment law, intellectual property
Electronic Data Involved: unknown
Keywords: spoliation, intent to deprive, relevance of data, measures no greater than necessary to cure the prejudice
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