Data Preservation – Page 102 – Electronic Discovery Law

United States v. Philip Morris USA Inc., 327 F. Supp. 2d 21 (D.D.C. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Finding it “astounding” that defendant’s employees failed to follow court’s preservation order and defendant’s own document retention policies, court rejected plaintiff’s request for adverse inference but imposed monetary sanction of $2,750,000 and barred testimony from at least 11 witnesses who failed to comply with defendant’s own internal document retention program

Nature of Case: Tobacco litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Gorgen Co. v. Brecht, 2002 WL 977467 (Minn. Ct. App. May 14, 2002) (Unpublished)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Order granting ex parte TRO before complaint was filed, and which prohibited defendants from destroying or altering electronic documents pertaining to complaint, was abuse of discretion

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic documents

Metro. Opera Ass?n, Inc. v. Local 100, 2004 WL 1943099 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 27, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: On defendant’s motion for reconsideration, court again described numerous discovery failings by the defendants, concluded that it would adhere to its prior decision at 212 F.R.D. 178, and further rejected two new arguments belatedly advanced by defendant relating the merits of plaintiff’s underlying claims

Nature of Case: Opera company sued union

Electronic Data Involved: Email and electronic documents; hard drives

RKI, Inc. v. Grimes, 177 F. Supp. 2d 859 (N.D. Ill. 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court granted emergency motion to compel, requiring defendants to appear for deposition and produce computers for inspection by plaintiff’s computer forensics expert; at subsequent bench trial, in light of defendants’ deletion of data from computers after litigation commenced, repeated defragmentation of hard drives prior to court-ordered inspections, and decision not to offer any testimony to explain same, court drew adverse inference; court awarded plaintiff $100,000 as royalty for defendants’ unauthorized use of trade secrets, and $150,000 in punitive damages for the willful and malicious misappropriation of trade secrets and attempted cover-up

Nature of Case: Manufacturer sued former employee and competitor for misappropriation of trade secrets and related torts

Electronic Data Involved: Software and databases containing sales and customer information

William T. Thompson Co. v. Gen. Nutrition Corp., Inc., 593 F. Supp. 1443 (C.D. Cal. 1984)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendant’s discovery abuse and destruction of evidence warranted monetary sanctions and default judgment

Nature of Case: Antitrust

Electronic Data Involved: Sales and inventory data

Haynes v. Office of Attorney Gen., 298 F. Supp. 2d 1154 (D. Kan. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Terminated employee obtained preliminary injunction preventing his former employer from accessing “private” files stored on his work computer or discussing “private” files that were accessed; employer further ordered to provide employee access to his private files to determine which ones he wanted copied; employee prohibited from deleting any information from work computer

Nature of Case: Former assistant attorney general sought damages and injunctive relief

Electronic Data Involved: Employee’s “private” information contained on work computer

MPCT Solutions Corp. v. Methe, 1999 WL 495115 (N.D. Ill. July 2, 1999)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Sanctions in form of preliminary injunction preventing defendant from contacting MPCT clients granted, after defendant violated preservation order by deleting documents from laptop and defragmenting hard drive, thus preventing the recovery of deleted data

Nature of Case: Enforcement of non-competition agreement

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic documents stored on laptop

In re St. Jude Med., Inc., Silzone Heart Valves Prod. Liab. Litig., 2002 WL 341019 (D. Minn. Mar. 1, 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court entered supplementary pretrial preservation order to address “newly created documents” and backups of electronic data; regarding the latter, the order prohibits “the routine erasure of computerized information potentially relevant to the subject matter of this litigation,” but states that “The full and complete back-up of any server or other computer on a periodic basis (e.g. monthly) shall relieve the party of any obligation to maintain any interim backups of the same server or other computer.”

Nature of Case: Product liability

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic data and email, and backups of electronic data

Zhou v. Pittsburgh State Univ., 2003 WL 1905988 (D. Kan. Feb. 5, 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Motion to compel production of computer-generated salary data granted; court further ordered parties to preserve all relevant evidence including all data compilations, computerized data and other electronically-recorded information

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Computerized payroll records

Hester v. Bayer Corp., 206 F.R.D. 683 (M.D. Ala. 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: After case was removed to federal court, defendant obtained order vacating state court’s entry of ex parte preservation order requiring defendant to “suspend all routine destruction of documents, including but not limited to, recycling back-up tapes, automated deletion of e-mail, and reformatting hard drives,” compliance with which defendant estimated to cost $50,000/month

Nature of Case: Product liability

Electronic Data Involved: Documents and information in paper or electronic format

Tag:Data Preservation