Discoverability Scope, Including FRCP 26(b)(1) Scope (Prior to Dec. 1, 2015) – Page 17

Cahill v. Doe, 879 A.2d 943 (Del. Super. Ct. 2005)

Dec 01 2005

Key Insight: Court denied John Doe’s motion for protective order preventing internet service provider from disclosing his identity, finding that (1) plaintiffs had, in good faith, alleged that John Doe had used the internet as a tool for defamation, (2) the identifying information sought was directly and materially related to thir claim, and (3) the information could not be obtained from any other source

Nature of Case: Elected town council member and wife sued anonymous user of an internet “blog” who posted defamatory statements about plaintiffs on blog

Electronic Data Involved: Blog posting

McDougal-Wilson v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 232 F.R.D. 246 (E.D.N.C. 2005)

Dec 01 2005

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff’s motion to compel defendant to produce (among other things) computer generated employee profiles of all its employees in North Carolina from 1995 to the present, finding that producing records of over 1,000 employees who were not similarly situated to plaintiff would be unduly burdensome and oppressive and was unlikely to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Computer generated employee profiles

Crown-Life Ins. Co. v. Craig, 995 F.2d 1376 (7th Cir. 1993)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Insurer’s willful failure to comply with discovery orders and failure to produce database warranted evidentiary preclusion order amounting to entry of default judgment on agent’s counterclaim

Nature of Case: Insurer sued former general agent and agent counterclaimed for renewal commissions owed

Electronic Data Involved: Database containing raw data regarding policies sold by agents

SEC v. Beacon Hill Asset Mgmt. LLC, 231 F.R.D. 134 (S.D.N.Y. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Granting motion to compel contact list printed out from defendant’s contact management software program which was not timely included on defendant’s privilege log, court rejected “frivolous” argument that the contact list technically did not exist until it was printed: “For more than thirty years, Fed.R.Civ . P. 34(a) has included data stored on electronic media as being subject to a Rule 34 request. The fact that the data has not been printed out does not mean that the document does not exist. Indeed, if BH’s argument were meritorious, any party could avoid producing damaging documents through the simple expedient of storing them on electronic media and never printing them out.”

Nature of Case: SEC enforcement action

Electronic Data Involved: Email, spreadsheets and contact list

Dziadkiewicz v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of R.I., 2004 WL 2418308 (D.R.I. Oct. 13, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Since defendant failed to timely produce database dictionary and did not produce all of its expert’s relevant email, court granted motion to compel production of expert’s email; court further granted plaintiff’s request to reconvene expert’s deposition and would allow plaintiff’s expert to review additional material produced and modify his conclusions accordingly

Nature of Case: ERISA litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Email and database dictionary

Stallings v. Daniels, 583 S.E.2d 428 (Table, Text in WESTLAW), 2003 WL 21791751 (N.C. App. Aug. 5, 2003) (Unpublished)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Appellate court reversed trial court’s dismissal of suit; backup tape of plaintiff’s earlier court proceeding was public record under state statute and defendants were required to permit plaintiff to examine and inspect the backup tape

Nature of Case: Suit to compel disclosure of public records

Electronic Data Involved: Backup tape containing sound recording of a hearing in a separate lawsuit

Hagemeyer N. Am., Inc. v. Gateway Data Sci. Corp., 222 F.R.D. 594 (E.D. Wis. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Adopting Zubulake and McPeek approaches, court ordered defendant to restore a sampling of five backup tapes selected by the plaintiff; parties would thereafter be required to make additional submissions addressing whether the burden or expense of satisfying the entire request was proportionate to the likely benefit

Electronic Data Involved: Email stored on backup tapes

Georgia Emission Testing Co. v. Reheis, 602 S.E.2d 153 (Ga. Ct. App. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Trial court abused its discretion in ordering parties to share costs of requested discovery equally, and should have ordered the requesting party to bear full cost where requested information should have been available in the requesting party?s own records, and the request involved the creation of a report that otherwise did not exist, and had to be specially created by a nonparty contractor at significant cost

Nature of Case: Suit to recover fees improperly assessed pursuant to Motor Vehicle Emission Inspection and Maintenance Act

Electronic Data Involved: Special report extracted from massive database of information

State v. City of Clearwater, 863 So.2d 149 (Fla. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: City employees? personal email not subject to disclosure under public records law because it fell outside the state’s statutory definition of public records; mere placement of such email on government-owned computer system does not transform such email into a “public record”

Nature of Case: Suit by newspaper to access city employees’ emails under public records law; issue was certified to Florida Supreme Court as “question of great public importance”

Electronic Data Involved: Personal email stored on government-owned computers

Williams v. Owens-Illinois, Inc., 665 F.2d 918 (9th Cir. 1982)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court did not abuse discretion in denying request for computer tapes where requesting party already possessed all information from tapes on wage cards and were not deprived of any data

Electronic Data Involved: Computer tapes containing wage information

Tag:Discoverability Scope, Including FRCP 26(b)(1) Scope (Prior to Dec. 1, 2015)