Electronic Discovery Law

Legal issues, news and best practices relating to the discovery of electronically stored information.

1
Failure to Preserve Key Player’s Email and Interview Transcripts Warrants Adverse Inference Instruction, but not Default Judgment
2
House Passes Proposed Evidence Rule 502
3
Defendant to Make “All Possible Efforts” to Produce Email from Personal Yahoo! Account; Failure to Timely Identify Account Warrants Sanctions
4
Defendant’s “Brazen Destruction of Evidence” Warrants Default Judgment
5
K&L Gates Partner Martha J. Dawson to Deliver E-Discovery Presentation in Berlin
6
The Sedona Conference® Commentary on Preservation, Management and Identification of Sources of Information that are Not Reasonably Accessible
7
Avoiding Question of Whether Third-Party’s Compliance with Subpoena Might Violate Stored Communications Act, Court Instructs Plaintiff to Serve Rule 34 Request for Production Instead
8
Magistrate Judge Imposes Monetary Sanctions and Recommends Adverse Inference Instruction, but not Dismissal, for “Reckless and Egregious Discovery Misconduct”
9
E-Discovery Amendments to California’s Civil Discovery Act Now Awaiting Governor’s Signature
10
Qualcomm’s Appeal and Sanctioned Attorneys’ Cross-Appeals Dismissed by Federal Circuit Court of Appeals

Failure to Preserve Key Player’s Email and Interview Transcripts Warrants Adverse Inference Instruction, but not Default Judgment

Nursing Home Pension Fund v. Oracle Corp., 2008 WL 4093497 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 2, 2008)

In this class action securities litigation, plaintiffs sought sanctions based on alleged evidence spoliation by defendants.  Plaintiffs moved for terminating sanctions or, in the alternative, for lesser sanctions in the form of adverse inference instructions and an order precluding defendants from relying on spoliated evidence.  Plaintiffs submitted a long list of actions allegedly taken by defendants that led to the failure to preserve or the affirmative destruction of evidence relevant to this lawsuit.

District Judge Susan Illston declined to impose terminating sanctions because the actions alleged to have been taken by defendants did not “eclipse entirely the possibility of a just result.”  The court found that plaintiffs had not demonstrated the degree of prejudice necessary to warrant terminating sanctions, primarily because plaintiffs had received a large quantity of materials in discovery.  In addition, the court noted that public policy strongly favored deciding the case on its merits, and that less drastic sanctions could be imposed that would permit a decision on the merits while also ensuring that defendants did not benefit from any spoliation.

As to lesser sanctions, the court found that adverse inferences in plaintiffs’ favor were warranted with regard to some categories of evidence that defendants had conceded was not produced or preserved.

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House Passes Proposed Evidence Rule 502

On September 8, 2008, the House of Representatives passed without amendment S. 2450, a bill adding new Evidence Rule 502 to the Federal Rules of Evidence.  The Senate had earlier approved the bill by unanimous consent on February 27, 2008.  Having passed in identical form in both chambers, the bill now awaits the signature of the President before becoming law.  The President is expected to sign the legislation in the next several weeks.

The legislation protects against inadvertent waiver of the attorney-client privilege and work product protection and is identical to proposed Evidence Rule 502, which was approved by the Judicial Conference of the United States and transmitted to Congress for its consideration in September 2007.  The new rule will apply in all proceedings commenced after the date of enactment and, insofar as is just and practicable, in all proceedings pending on such date of enactment. 

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Defendant to Make “All Possible Efforts” to Produce Email from Personal Yahoo! Account; Failure to Timely Identify Account Warrants Sanctions

Infinite Energy, Inc. v. Thai Heng Chang, 2008 WL 4098329 (N.D. Fla. Aug. 29, 2008)

In this breach of employment agreement and misappropriation of trade secrets case, plaintiff moved to compel production of emails from defendant’s personal Yahoo! account.  Plaintiff contended that it only recently learned of the account, and that defendant should have disclosed the account in response to an earlier discovery request.  Plaintiff argued that emails from the account contained highly relevant information crucial to the issues in the case.

Although defendant claimed he could not produce the emails because they had been destroyed by Yahoo!, he offered only a copy of a generic response from Yahoo! about deactivating accounts.  The court observed that Yahoo! may have a process for obtaining emails from deactivated accounts, and declined to accept defendant’s explanation that production was “impossible,” particularly given the important evidentiary value of the emails and the “feeble offering” by defendant in support of the contention.

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Defendant’s “Brazen Destruction of Evidence” Warrants Default Judgment

Atlantic Recording Corp. v. Howell, 2008 WL 4080008 (D. Ariz. Aug. 29, 2008)

In this copyright infringement litigation, seven major recording companies alleged that defendant Howell had used the KaZaA file-sharing program to download their sound recordings and distribute them to other users of the network.  Howell had previously resisted plaintiffs’ efforts to conduct a forensic examination of his computer hard drive, and the court had granted plaintiffs’ motion to compel and granted leave to take additional discovery.  With the benefit of this additional discovery, plaintiffs moved for terminating sanctions based on Howell’s willful spoliation of material evidence.

Based on the evidence presented, the court found that:

•  Defendant removed the KaZaA program from his computer and deleted the contents of the shared folder shortly after receiving notice of the lawsuit

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K&L Gates Partner Martha J. Dawson to Deliver E-Discovery Presentation in Berlin

K&L Gates Compliance Talks

E-Discovery Analysis and Technology (e-DAT) Group: 

Tool for Due Diligence, Compliance and Investigations

Thursday, September 18, 2008, 5:30-6:30 pm
K&L Gates LLP
Markgrafenstraße 42, 10117 Berlin
 

Presentation by Martha J. Dawson, K&L Gates, Seattle
With an Introduction by Dr. Wilhlem Hartung, K&L Gates, Berlin
 

The Sedona Conference® Commentary on Preservation, Management and Identification of Sources of Information that are Not Reasonably Accessible

July 2008.  Available for free download here.

From the Preface:

This Sedona Conference® Commentary focuses on the decision making process relating to the preservation of sources of electronically stored information that may contain discoverable information that is “not reasonably accessible.”  The “reasonable accessibility” distinction – introduced by the 2006 Federal E-Discovery Amendments as part of the “two-tiered” approach to discovery – plays a role in, but is not wholly determinative of, preservation obligations.

The central dilemma of preservation planning in the absence of the opportunity to discuss discovery requests or reach prior agreement among the parties is predicting exactly which sources of information may actually be discoverable in a given case.  No bright-lines exist. The primary duty is to make reasonable assessments in good faith.

To assist litigants and the courts, we have developed the following Guidelines that summarize our recommendations for making those assessments.  The Guidelines also discuss how parties may “identify” inaccessible sources that will not be preserved and emphasize the value of cooperative efforts to reach agreements on preservation topics in dispute that reflect the unique demands of each case.
 

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Avoiding Question of Whether Third-Party’s Compliance with Subpoena Might Violate Stored Communications Act, Court Instructs Plaintiff to Serve Rule 34 Request for Production Instead

Flagg v. City of Detroit, 252 F.R.D. 346 (E.D. Mich. 2008)

In an earlier decision in this case, the court denied defendants’ motion to quash subpoenas to SkyTel for the production of text messages.  The court found that plaintiff was entitled to pursue the production of certain text messages sent or received by specified officials or employees of the City (some of whom were also named as individual defendants in the suit) during specified time frames, using text messaging devices supplied by SkyTel.  The court observed that the relevance (and hence discoverability) of the text messages necessarily turned upon the content of the communications.  Thus, it was essential to establish a procedure for the review of the content of each such communication, for determining both relevance and the application of any privilege.  The court appointed two magistrate judges to review the communications and make the initial determination as to which were discoverable.  Our post on that March 20, 2008 order is available here.

In this recent decision, the court ruled upon motions by the City and one of the individual defendants seeking to prevent the discovery from going forward.  The moving defendants argued that the federal Stored Communications Act (“SCA”), 18 U.S .C. § 2701 et seq., wholly precludes the production in civil litigation of electronic communications stored by a non-party service provider.  The court rejected this proposed reading of the SCA, observing that “[d]efendants’ position, if accepted, would dramatically alter discovery practice, in a manner clearly not contemplated by the existing rules or law, by permitting a party to defeat the production of electronically stored information created by that party and still within its control – information that plainly is subject to civil discovery, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(a)(1) – through the simple expedient of storing it with a third party.”  The court concluded that, because nothing in the plain language of the SCA requires this extraordinary result, and because defendants had not identified any other support for this proposition, the discovery effort contemplated in its March 20, 2008 opinion could go forward (albeit through slightly different means).

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Magistrate Judge Imposes Monetary Sanctions and Recommends Adverse Inference Instruction, but not Dismissal, for “Reckless and Egregious Discovery Misconduct”

Keithley v. Home Store.com, Inc., 2008 WL 3833384 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 12, 2008)

In this patent infringement case, plaintiffs sought terminating, evidentiary and monetary sanctions based upon defendants’ spoliation of evidence.  Plaintiffs argued that defendants had destroyed three types of evidence:  (1) source code; (2) early architectural, design and implementation documents; and (3) reports.  Plaintiffs contended that the spoliation of these materials impacted plaintiffs’ ability to meet their burden of proving infringement.

The court held several hearings and received extensive briefing on the spoliation issue, which the court observed “became a moving target because of Defendants’ belated production of evidence that it had previously stated was either nonexistent or destroyed.”  In the end, the magistrate judge imposed a monetary sanction of fees and costs associated with defendants’ discovery misconduct, and recommended that the district court give an adverse inference jury instruction to address the spoliation that occurred.  Although the magistrate judge found that the discovery misconduct by defendants in the case was "among the most egregious" the court had seen, she declined to recommend terminating sanctions because there was no evidence that defendants engaged in deliberate spoliation, and because the extreme sanction of dismissal would go beyond what was necessary to cure the prejudice to plaintiffs.

Some examples of defendants’ “reckless and egregious discovery misconduct” include the following:

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E-Discovery Amendments to California’s Civil Discovery Act Now Awaiting Governor’s Signature

Assembly Bill 926 (Evans):  Passed the Senate July 10, 2008; Passed the Assembly August 7, 2008

The amendments included in AB 926 closely track several of the 2006 e-discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.  Among other things, the amendments:

— Establish procedures for a person to obtain discovery of electronically stored information, as defined, in addition to documents, tangible things, or land or other property, in the possession of any other party to the action. 

— Provide that if a party responding to a demand for production of ESI objects to a specified form for producing the information, or if no form is specified in the demand, the responding party shall state in its response the form in which it intends to produce each type of information.  If a demand for production does not specify a form or forms for producing a type of ESI, the responding party would be required to produce the information in the form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a form that is reasonably usable, but need not produce the same ESI in more than one form.

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Qualcomm’s Appeal and Sanctioned Attorneys’ Cross-Appeals Dismissed by Federal Circuit Court of Appeals

Qualcomm Inc. v. Broadcom Corp., No. 05-CV-1958-B (BLM), United States District Court for the Southern District of California; No. 2008-1348, 1381 & 1382, United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

In May 2008, Qualcomm filed an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit regarding Judge Rudi M. Brewster’s March 5, 2008 “Order Remanding in Part Order of Magistrate Court re Motion for Sanctions Dated 1/07/08."  On May 19, 2008, sanctioned attorneys Batchelder, Mammen, Leung and Patch filed cross appeals.  In light of these appeals, Magistrate Judge Barbara L. Major concluded that jurisdiction had been transferred to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  In an order dated May 29, 2008, Magistrate Judge Major sua sponte vacated all pending briefing and hearing dates and stated the court would refrain from ruling on the pending motions until after the Federal Circuit had addressed the appeal and, if it found it appropriate to do so, remanded the case back to the district court.  Magistrate Judge Major later denied Broadcom’s motion for reconsideration of the May 29 order.

On June 3, Broadcom Corporation filed its Emergency Motion to Dismiss Appeal of Qualcomm Incorporated, and two days later, responding attorneys-appellees/cross appellants Batchelder, Mammen, and Leung filed their non-opposition.  Broadcom’s Motion argued that Qualcomm’s appeal should be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction because it impermissibly seeks review of an interlocutory district court order remanding for further proceedings, i.e., a non-final order.  Broadcom argued that there is still much to be done in the district court, and that the parties were in the midst of discovery when Qualcomm’s notice of appeal halted the proceedings.  In addition, Broadcom argued that the CREDO process arising out of the sanctions proceedings was still underway, and that the final CREDO protocol would necessarily be informed by the ongoing sanctions proceedings before the magistrate judge.

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