Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff’s request for forensic search of former employer’s information systems where plaintiff offered no credible evidence that defendants were unwilling to produce computer-generated documents or that defendants had withheld relevant information
Nature of Case: Wrongful termination, race discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Permanent injunction that restrained defendant from “[r]emoving or destroying any files, or copies of files, including but not limited to Defendants’ computer or computer files” was overbroad because it enjoined activities defendant had a legal right to perform, such as deleting records and files that had nothing to do with the subject litigation
Nature of Case: Company sued former employee and his competing business for misappropriation of trade secrets
Electronic Data Involved: Computer files
Key Insight: Where defendant breached its duty to preserve by failing to establish a “comprehensive document retention policy” and by failing to properly disseminate the policy to its employees, and conduct evinced ?extraordinarily poor judgment? and ?gross negligence” but not willfulness or bad faith, magistrate recommended that prejudice to plaintiff could be remedied by precluding defendant from cross-examining plaintiff’s financial expert and by instructing the jury about the sanction
Nature of Case: Securities class action
Electronic Data Involved: Underlying data and calculations
Key Insight: Where husband consented to discovery of financial matters but resisted plaintiff’s broad request for access to all documents on all computers, court set out detailed protocol for the copying and review of computer data with oversight by court-appointed referee
Nature of Case: Divorce proceeding
Electronic Data Involved: Data on hard drives
Key Insight: Court granted plaintiffs? motion to compel production of vehicle?s ?black box? where information sought was not available elsewhere and was necessary for expert analysis of airbag system despite defendants? arguments that data was irrelevant and unreliable and that retrieving the data would be unduly expensive because of need for technician to travel cross-country; regarding unreliability, court noted that a Daubert motion was not precluded in future
Nature of Case: Personal injury resulting from auto accident
Electronic Data Involved: Vehicle’s “black box”
Key Insight: Court denied individual defendant’s motion for reconsideration of default judgment entered against her and other defendants for continued destruction of evidence and continued possession of plaintiff’s proprietary files; although there was no evidence that individual defendant personally engaged in wrongful acts, she was not insulated by simply leaving compliance with court orders to other defendant; further, individual had numerous opportunities to disavow knowledge of misconduct or detail what efforts she personally took to comply with court orders but never did so
Nature of Case: Misapproriation of trade secrets and related torts
Electronic Data Involved: Proprietary information in electronic form
Key Insight: Court imposed sanctions against city in the form of a rebuttable adverse inference, and fees and costs related to the discovery dispute, based upon city’s grossly negligent failure to institute litigation hold and consequent destruction of relevant hard copy documents
Nature of Case: Breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation
Electronic Data Involved: Email printouts and other hard copy documents
Key Insight: Denying defendant’s motion for a new trial, court concluded that adverse inference jury instruction based upon defendant’s mistaken failure to suspend document retention policy that deleted email every 30 days was not misleading or unduly prejudicial
Nature of Case: Patent infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Court granted defendants’ motion for sanctions and dismissed case with prejudice because, among other things, plaintiffs had failed to preserve relevant electronic data that plaintiffs knew were critical, and it would be impossible for defendants to defend the case without the electronic data that was not produced and no longer available
Nature of Case: Business sued competitors for defamation and unfair competition
Electronic Data Involved: Electronic data
Key Insight: Court denied plaintiffs’ motion for a preservation order, finding that plaintiff had not made a showing of a significant threat that documents would be lost or destroyed absent entry of an immediate order, and concluding that the regular procedures for discovery (including the court’s Electronic Discovery Guidelines) were sufficient and appropriate
Nature of Case: False Claims Act
Electronic Data Involved: Electronic evidence
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