Cost Shifting – Page 20 – Electronic Discovery Law

Union Ins. Co. v. Delta Casket Co. Inc., 06-2090, 2009 WL 10665127 (W.D. Tenn., Dec. 1, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Court granted Plaintiff?s motion that Defendants bear the costs Plaintiff incurred in producing archived emails, implicated by Defendant?s 30(b)(6) notice. The notice came after a year and a half of discovery and one month before the discovery deadline. Plaintiff was required to use a third party to conduct the search, put the retrieved emails on discs, send them to a copy service to convert to TIFF files and print them so Plaintiff?s counsel could review for relevancy and privilege. Plaintiff spent approximately $35,000 on this process. The Court held that Plaintiff?s Motion was timely and Defendants had notice before the emails were produced that Plaintiff was seeking costs, Plaintiff met its burden of showing the cost and burden incurred were undue and conversion of the discs to TIFF format was necessary in order for Plaintiff?s counsel to review the emails prior to production.

Nature of Case: Insurance indemnification

Electronic Data Involved: Archived email

Adele S.R.L. v. Filene?s Basement, Inc., 2009 WL 855955 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 24, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Finding that defendants? first, second, and third productions were ?patently inadequate? and that ?representations by defendants and their attorneys as to the completeness of production were false,? court concluded plaintiffs had incurred some expense as a result of defendants? discovery behavior and that ?the required expenditure of funds to pursue discovery is prejudice enough to justify cost-shifting?; addressing plaintiffs? specific request to shift costs related to the search of back-up tapes resisted by defendants, court declined to shift costs where plaintiffs had not proposed an electronic discovery plan at the outset of litigation and where plaintiffs failed to meaningfully address Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2) in their briefing

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, database information, back up tapes

Robert v. Bd. of County Comm?rs of Brown Count, Kan., 2009 WL 1362530 (D. Kan. May 14, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where defendants could not produce a requested email because of damage to author?s and recipient?s computers but where defendants undertook significant effort to search for the email, including a search by the county?s Information Technology Director and inquiry to the County?s email provider about the email?s availability, and where defendant offered to make the author?s computer available for inspection at plaintiff?s expense, court declined plaintiff?s request to ?shift the cost of an independent computer expert? to defendants and denied plaintiff?s motion to compel production of the email

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Surplus Source Group, LLC v. Mid-Am. Engine, 2009 WL 961207 (E.D. Tex. Apr. 8, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where the need for a third search of defendants? electronically stored information resulted from plaintiffs? delay in providing search terms, court ordered defendants to undertake third search, using terms provided by plaintiffs, but ordered plaintiffs to bear the cost of the third search, up to the amount equal to the second search, reasoning that such an order would essentially result in plaintiffs bearing the cost of the second search which was insufficient because of their delay

Nature of Case: Claims arising from defendants? alleged failure to split profits from sales of industrial equipment

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Dahl v. Bain Capital Partners, LLC 2009 WL 1748526 (D. Mass. June 22, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Briefly but comprehensively addressing a number of electronic discovery issues, court declined to shift discovery costs to the requesting party, declined to order defendants to bear the cost of changing the format of their responsive documents for production (unless such conversion was necessary to render the documents ?usable?), declined to order the production of all metadata and instead limited production to 12 fields of metadata proposed by plaintiffs, and ordered the production of spreadsheets and privilege logs in native format

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, metadata

In re Application of Michael Wilson & Partners, Ltd., 2009 WL 119374 (D. Colo. Apr. 30, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Reasoning that electronic storage devices ?perform the same function as did a file cabinet in the pre-electronic era? and that they must therefore be searched ?just as they would have had to do had all the information been printed out and stored in hard copy format? and also reasoning that ?[t]he fact that duplicate documents may have been stored and maintained in more than one place is irrelevant to the duty to search all locations,? court ordered respondents to subpoenas to conduct additional searches of all electronic storage devices in their possession at the time of their response; where the sharing of production costs had been ordered, court required requesting party to post $1 million pre-judgment cost bond in light of the ?circumstances of the case? including respondents? expenditure of more than $2.5 million and fears that the requesting party would dispute their share and attempt to avoid payment

Nature of Case: Litigation between an international law firm and a new firm comprised of its former employees related to the new firm?s alleged interference in business relationships and breach of certain duties

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Dawe v. Corrections, USA, 2009 WL 3233883 (E.D. Colo. Oct. 1, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Citing a ?pervasive? level of ?distrust that permeates this litigation? and plaintiff?s ?adamant refusal to permit even a limited inspection? and citing defendants? representations that additional, relevant information remained on the laptop and that the laptop had been ?forensically cleaned,? court granted defendants? motion to compel inspection of plaintiff?s laptop but ordered defendants to bear the cost – if inspection revealed relevant information was withheld, court invited a motion to shift some or all of the costs to plaintiff(s)

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, laptop

McGarry v. Becher, 2009 WL 1363456 (S.D. Ind. May 13, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Rejecting defendant?s claims that production of data stored in taser units related to the time and number of firings would be unduly burdensome in light of the high number of times the tasers were fired, including test firings required each day, Court granted in part plaintiff?s motion to compel production of the data upon finding that the device stored data related to no more than 585 firings, among other things, and where defendants made no showing that the printing of those entries would be unduly expensive; court ordered plaintiff to bear any cost of printing or downloading the information in excess of $200

Nature of Case: Potential class action regarding use of tasers in county jail

Electronic Data Involved: Data stored in taser related to date and time fired

United Consumers Club, Inc. v. Prime Time Mktg. Mgmt., Inc., 2009 WL 3200540 (N.D. Ind. Sept. 25, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where request for production was unduly burdensome in light of the cost of production and necessary labor to comply, despite the requesting party?s attempt to narrow the scope, and where the court found the request overly broad and that it sought information irrelevant to the litigation, court declined to compel production in response to the particular request, but granted in part other portions of the motion to compel

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Covad Commc?ns Co. v. Revonet, Inc., 258 F.R.D. 5 (D.D.C. 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where parties failed to reach agreement regarding inspection protocol for defendant?s relevant database, court stepped in and ordered plaintiff?s expert to image relevant servers and PCs and to search those systems for relevant documents; having generally declined to order searching of defendant?s exchange servers absent more than conclusory assertions of a deficient production, court found compelling justification for a comparative search of certain exchange servers where, in light of a previous server crash and subsequent restoration of the content, questions arose regarding the identification of all responsive emails

Nature of Case: Misappropriation and conversion of trade secret information

Electronic Data Involved: Database, emails, ESI

Tag:Cost Shifting