Case Summaries – Page 8 – Electronic Discovery Law

Balderas v. Ill. Cent. R.R. Co. (N.D. Ill. Jan. 8, 2021)

Jan 08 2021

Key Insight:

Further discovery must be based on more than mere speculation or suspicion that additional documents exist. The moving party must make a case showing “it can be reasonably deduced that other documents exist[.]”

The Court was unable to reach a ruling regarding Plaintiff’s requested search terms due to insufficient information. While Defendants did reject the terms and did not provide alternatives, plaintiff did not say what the requested terms were or why they were rejected.

With regards to specific discovery requests, Defendants were ordered to search for and produce responsive documents. The Court noted “boilerplate” objections without further explanation are equivalent to making no objection at all and individual authorization to access electronic communications is not required when the individuals are parties to the case. Additionally, emails and texts messages party’s employee are a compelling form of evidence that can be particularly significant in litigation.

Nature of Case: Civil Rights, Employment Discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Personnel Records, Business Records, Electronic Communications, Email, Texts, Voicemails, Instant Messages, Electronic Documents Generally

Case Summary

Charter Communications Operating, LLC v. Optymze, LLC (Del. Ch. 2021)

Jan 04 2021

Key Insight: Defendant committed serious misconduct sufficient to justify dismissal of its counterclaims under Rule 41(b). Defendant refused the reasonable request for native files exchanged via Microsoft Teams. Defendant produced individual emails containing each message. In this format, the messages could not be reassembled into complete conversations. Defendant was compelled to produce the native files which revealed extensive spoliation of evidence. Defendant edited numerous chat messages in an effort to hide instructions to employees to take actions that violated court orders. Because all of the unaddressed misconduct related to Defendant’s counterclaims, dismissal of those counterclaims with prejudice and award of fees and expenses is an adequate remedy.

Nature of Case: Breach of Contract

Electronic Data Involved: Instant message

Case Summary

Marine Depot, Int’l, Inc. v. James River Grp., Inc. (S.D. Fla. Dec. 30, 2020)

Dec 30 2020

Key Insight: Defendant asked the court to compel plaintiff to search its computers and servers for responsive documents and contended certain documents should exist and have not yet been produced. The court noted “Rule 34 is silent as to how a party must locate these responsive documents, and the measures a party must take in conducting its search.” Further, defendants offered no case law that would require plaintiff to search a location it had no reason to believe responsive documents would be located. Absent any factual basis to believe that additional search of plaintiff’s server is necessary or to rebut plaintiff’s sworn testimony that there are no relevant, non-duplicative documents stored there that have not already been produced, no further search was ordered and sanctions were not appropriate.

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Case Summary

In re Valsartan, Losartan, and Irbesartan Prods. Liab. Litig. (D.N.J. Dec. 2, 2020)

Dec 02 2020

Key Insight: Defendants violated the Court ordered ESI protocol when it unilaterally adopted a CAL platform without input from Plaintiffs. Defendants failed to timely disclose their intentions to use TAR and collaborate in good faith with Plaintiffs on the TAR platform to be used prior to implementation. Due to the cost and time required for a manual review, the Court permitted Defendants to do a TAR review of its non-responsive documents using the protocol previously negotiated but not finalized by the parties.

Nature of Case: Products Liability

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic Documents Generally

Case Summary

Laub v. Horbaczewski (C.D. Cal. 2020)

Nov 17 2020

Key Insight: Plaintiffs sought Slack messages and defendants claimed they did not have access to the messages because of its level of Slack plan. The court instructed plaintiffs to pursue the Slack messages through a third party subpoena and defendants objected to the overbroad scope of the subpoena. The court concluded plaintiffs “credibly argued” that the Slack messages “may be relevant to the issues involved in this case,” but found that the request was not proportional to the needs of the case under the second prong of Rule 26(b)(1) because: (1) The defendants did not have access to the messages and requiring them to produce the messages would impose an undue burden and expense, and (2) the messages would likely be cumulative because the record was “replete with evidence of Plaintiffs’ involvement” and plaintiffs “offer no evidence that the private messages contain any novel or noteworthy information that warrant compelling their production.”

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Instant messages

Case Summary

Abedin v. Palominos Osorio (N.Y.A.D. Nov. 12, 2020)

Nov 12 2020

Key Insight: The court granted defendant’s motion to compel the minor plaintiff to sign authorizations to obtain her social media information. “[D]efendant demonstrated that records from [plaintiff’s] Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram accounts were ‘reasonably likely to yield relevant evidence.’” The ESI was relevant to alleged emotional and mental trauma plaintiff suffered as a result of the accident as evidenced by her social isolation and withdrawal.

Nature of Case: Personal injuries

Electronic Data Involved: Social media

Case Summary

Milke v. City of Phoenix (D. Ariz. 2020)

Oct 30 2020

Key Insight: The court dismissed plaintiff’s civil rights action based on spoliation of physical and ESI evidence, and for failure to submit complete and accurate discovery responses. The court previously sanctioned plaintiff for spoliation of evidence and determined that lesser sanctions short of dismissal could not cure the prejudice to defendant. Plaintiff, her agents, and her counsel failed to preserve website and social media sites and took affirmative steps on multiple occasions to destroy the evidence after litigation became reasonably foreseeable.

Nature of Case: Civil Rights Act

Electronic Data Involved: Social media and websites

Case Summary

In re: 3M Combat Arms Earplug Prods. Liab. Litig. (N.D. Fla., Oct. 2020)

Key Insight: In their discovery requests, Defendants sought data concerning the Plaintiff’s use of social media and text messages concerning matters relevant to the litigation. After Plaintiff provided responses to these discovery requests, Defendants filed a Motion to Compel Plaintiff to submit to a forensic examination of his mobile phone. Defendants based their Motion on the arguments of ensuring complete collection of data from the mobile phone, and more specifically, complete data of Plaintiff’s use of social media messaging and text messaging with several parties on said mobile phone.

The Court denied Defendants’ Motion because it found that the electronic stored information (ESI) already produced was complete and/or sufficient due to the Plaintiff already working with an ESI expert to obtain the requested data, particularly from the mobile device. In short, the Defendants’ lacked a sufficient reason to believe that the data already produced was not complete.

Similarly, the Defendants failed to demonstrate that a forensic examination of the mobile device would produce relevant data showing that Plaintiff had a pattern or practice of deleting the above mentioned messages. Moreover, the data produced by the examination would only show that a message was deleted, not when or why the message(s) were deleted, the contents of the message(s), or a pattern of deleting messages. In sum, the Court found that the requested forensic examination would be “disproportionate to the slight importance” it would provide to the litigation.

Nature of Case: Product Liability

Electronic Data Involved: Cellular Phone, Text Messages, Social Media, Social Media Messages,

Case Summary

Haroun v. ThoughtWorks, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 2020)

Oct 07 2020

Key Insight: Plaintiff has no basis to seek “discovery on discovery” from defendants. Plaintiff “does not identify any gaps in production of ESI, any reason to believe that documents have been deleted, or any basis for asserting that Defendants are not searching all relevant and reasonably available sources of ESI that would contain material responsive to Plaintiff’s document requests.” Plaintiff can inquire at deposition and review the document production to identify obvious gaps.

Nature of Case: Employment Discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Business documents

Case Summary

Rich v. Butowsky (D.D.C., 2020)

Oct 06 2020

Key Insight: A rule 45 motion to quash subpoenas on electronic subpoenas for electronic identities of anonymous users uses the 2themart.com test and are very fact specific

Nature of Case: Defamation

Electronic Data Involved: User account information

Keywords: Murder, twitter, first amendment, motion to quash, subpoena, defamation

Catagory:Case Summaries