Adequacy of Search/Identification or Collection

e-DAT Practice Group Partner to Attend EDRM Detroit Symposium 2023

May 31 2023

Daniel Miller, a partner of the K&L Gates e-Discovery Analysis & Technology (“e-DAT”) Group and the firm’s Pittsburgh office, will attend this week’s EDRM Detroit Symposium 2023. Both Daniel and Krysta Slavik, an e-DAT Group Solutions Analyst based in Pittsburgh, are participating in committees for the “EDRM 2.0” initiative, which focuses on how e-discovery will evolve and adapt in light of advancements in artificial intelligence. The EDRM Detroit Symposium 2023 will feature meetings related to this new initiative, presentations about trends in electronic discovery, and a panel discussion on e-discovery missteps.

First Pittsburgh “Under the Wire” CLE Seminar Features Presentation on E-Discovery “Hot Topics”

Nov 18 2022

The Pittsburgh office of K&L Gates recently hosted its first “Under the Wire” CLE seminar on November 15th, 2022. The CLE seminar was the first of a new series of in-person CLE events hosted at the K&L Gates Pittsburgh office.

At the inaugural seminar, Daniel Miller (a partner in our e-Discovery Analysis & Technology (“e-DAT”) practice group) and Laura Veith (an associate focusing on commercial litigation) presented on a number of e-discovery “hot topics.” The presentation emphasized how record preservation and collection efforts must adapt in light of clients’ increasing use of new technologies, including mobile devices and applications present on those devices, ephemeral messaging, and enterprise collaboration platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Slack.

In re Actos End Payor Antitrust Litig. (S.D.N.Y. 2022)

Mar 30 2022

Key Insight: On plaintiff’s motion to compel, the magistrate judge ruled that defendant Takeda was to produce “all responsive ESI to Plaintiffs, including earlier-in-time emails.” In its production, Takeda had used email threading by which a party reviews and produced the most-inclusive email in a thread. The Discovery Protocol did not permit that approach. The magistrate emphasized the need for parties to have early discussions regarding ESI to avoid later misunderstandings and disputes. Takeda’s exclusion of lesser included emails from production resulted in the exclusion of metadata associated with the earlier chain emails. The magistrate declined to impose email threading on plaintiffs and recognized that while requiring Takeda to produce earlier-in-time emails would cause additional burden, such burden is not undue since Takeda agreed to the Discovery Protocol and likely has already reviewed many of the emails at issue.

Nature of Case: Antitrust

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Case Summary

O’Donnell/Salvatori Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. (W.D. Wash. 2021)

Oct 01 2021

Key Insight: Plaintiff moved the court to compel defendant to produce all non-privileged documents hitting on the agreed ESI search terms, regardless of whether they were relevant to a claim or defense in the case. Defendant had conducted a relevance review and withheld emails, such as employees joining or leaving the team, technical issues, and buying a new boat. The court denied plaintiff’s motion, finding that although there is little case law on the issue, “the courts that have addressed it have almost uniformly found that a relevance review, and the withholding of irrelevant documents, is appropriate.” Thus, the court ultimately held that “a party’s agreement to run search terms does not waive its right to review the resulting documents for relevance so long as the review can be done in a reasonably timely manner.”

Nature of Case: Copyright Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Case Summary

Federal Trade Commission v. American Screening, LLC (E.D. Mo. 2021)

Jul 07 2021

Key Insight: Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel Defendants to produce internal emails in litigation over false advertising and the FTC Act; Defendants had previously objected to Plaintiff’s discovery requests without disclosing if responsive materials were withheld on the basis of their objections. Defendants responded that use of 58 search terms provided by Plaintiff yielded over 7,000,000 results, and that Plaintiff’s request(s) were overbroad, irrelevant, vague, ambiguous and burdensome. The Court rejects these assertions, granting Plaintiff’s Motion and holding that Defendants must search for and produce the information sought by Plaintiff.

Nature of Case: Antitrust, False Advertising, Consumer Protection

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Case Summary

Oro BRC4, LLC v. Silvertree Apartments, Nos. 2:19-cv-4907, 2:19-cv-5087 (S.D. Ohio, June 10, 2021).

Key Insight: Plaintiff sought a motion for spoliation sanctions based on defendant’s failure to prepare its Rule 30(b)(6) deponent to testify on topics related to ESI preservation and collection, and for spoliation sanctions related to the failure to preserve ESI. The court granted sanctions for defendant’s failure to prepare its 30(b)(6) designee, finding: “The production of an unprepared witness is tantamount to a failure to appear, and warrants the imposition of sanctions.” Defendant offered its head of IT as the corporate designee. He received the deposition notice less than 72 hours before the deposition, spent about 6 hours preparing to testify (approximately 10 minutes per topic), did not review any documents other than his own emails, and did not speak or communicate with other employees to gather information on the topics he was supposed to testify about. The court ordered a second 30(b)(6) deposition, required defendant to pay the reasonable costs and expenses associated with attending the second deposition and fees for plaintiff’s ESI consultant to attend, and awarded fees associated with having to bring the motion to compel. On the issue of failure to preserve ESI evidence, the court concluded it was premature to address this issue until the second 30(b)(6) deposition, which would cover topics relating to defendant’s litigation hold efforts.

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: ESI business documents and electronic devices

Case Summary

Healthedge Software, Inc. v. Sharp Health Plan (D. Mass. 2021)

Key Insight:

Defendant filed a Motion to Compel Plaintiff to produce documents, including source code, and Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel Defendant to disclose how it collected and searched its electronically stored information (ESI). The Court granted Plaintiff’s Motion while partially granting Defendant’s Motion.

A significant issue in both Motions was the respective parties’ collection of ESI. The Court noted that the parties failed “to engage in cooperative planning regarding ESI”, and directed the parties to confer regarding custodians and search terms of ESI collection and review. In partially granting Defendant’s Motion, the Court directed Plaintiff to further articulate its objections, but stated that some of Defendant’s discovery requests were premature even if Plaintiff was obligated to respond to them by the close of discovery.

Nature of Case: Breach of Contract

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic Documents, Source Code

Case Summary

DR Distributors v. 21 Century Smoking, Inc. (N.D. Ill. 2021)

Key Insight: The court granted plaintiff’s motion for sanctions but declined to find “intent to deprive” under Rule 37(e), instead applying Rule 26(g) for failing “to make a reasonable investigation to ensure that [defendant] provided all available responsive information and documents.” The court issued sanctions and curative measures under Rules 37(a), 37(b), 37(c) and 37(e)(1). This 256-page sanctions opinion arises from ESI issues beginning at the outset of protracted litigation involving infringement claims over similar trademarks for e-cigarettes. Defendants and their counsel were sanctioned for multiple failures to preserve and collect ESI, including: failure to preserve messages from web-based email and chat applications; failure to turn off auto-delete functions on messages; defense counsel’s failure to follow-up with written hold instructions to preserve relevant ESI and take steps to collect messages from web-based applications; defense counsel’s failure to perform custodial interviews to identify likely sources of ESI; defense counsel’s failure to understand that relevant emails may be found in both corporate and personal email and mistakenly believed that data within the web applications would be saved to corporate hard drives; failure to disclose the existence of relevant ESI; defense counsel offered false testimony about the existence of ESI; and defense counsel’s failure to supervise defendants in self-collected ESI.

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement (Lanham Act)

Electronic Data Involved: Email, Instant messages

Case Summary

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

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

Tag:Adequacy of Search/Identification or Collection