Metadata – Page 10 – Electronic Discovery Law

Eli Lilly & Co. v. Wockhardt Ltd., 2010 WL 2605855 (S.D. Ind. June 22, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where plaintiff had produced millions of pages organized as maintained in the usual course of business, court denied defendant?s motion to compel plaintiff to precisely match the documents produced with the request to which they responded, but, citing plaintiff?s ?demonstrated ample resources?, ordered plaintiff to ?generally match up its documents with defendant?s requests by letter, chart, or some form of index? within 14 days; court declined to compel production of metadata that did not exist and ?OCR information? but ordered plaintiff to provide ?custodian information? as to those documents which lacked it

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Makowski v. SmithAmundsen LLC, 2010 WL 3172236 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 11, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where defendants were unable to produce an electronic version of an interview summary available in hard copy and where the creator of the summary testified that after printing the summary, she could not find the electronic version on her computer and hypothesized that perhaps it had inadvertently been saved in a temporary file, the court could not find that the duty to preserve had been willfully breached or that defendant had been prejudiced by the loss, particularly where a second summary of the same interview was produced and where the person who was interviewed was available for deposition and trial, and denied plaintiff?s motion for sanctions

Nature of Case: Violations of Title VII and the Family and Medical Leave Act

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic version of document produced only in hard copy

Chevron Corp. v. Stratus Consulting, Inc., 2010 WL 3489922 (D. Colo. Aug. 31, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court granted petitioner?s motion to compel production of subpoenaed information in native format, including re-production of materials already produced in .pdf format, where, despite respondent?s objections, the court determined the underlying metadata could be probative, but ordered petitioner to bear the cost where the subpoena had been ?less than clear? regarding the format of production and where respondents? claims of undue burden ?carrie[d] some legitimacy?; court?s opinion acknowledged respondent?s argument regarding the inability to Bates stamp native documents and ordered that the documents be Bates-stamped ?only as technologically possible?

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Pitney Bowes Gov. Solutions, Inc. v. United States, 94 Fed. Cl. 1 (Fed. Cl. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where, despite the destruction of relevant ESI, defendant was able to restore the relevant documents from backup tapes and produce them, but where the metadata was different such that the author of the documents was listed as one person rather than the many who had actually authored them, the court accepted the explanation that the author reflected in restored documents had received each document as an email attachment and saved those documents to her hard drive, thus changing the metadata, and further found that plaintiff made no showing that the documents were otherwise modified and denied the motion for sanctions

Nature of Case: Bid Protest

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Grey v. Kirkland & Ellis, LLP, 2010 WL 3526478 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 2, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where plaintiffs offered nothing more than speculation regarding defendants? alleged intentional or grossly negligent spoliation of metadata and where defendant asserted that before destroying the server at issue, the information thereon was migrated and no metadata was knowingly changed, the court declined ?to infer from the absence of metadata that such evidence would have been favorable to Plaintiff?s claims?

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic records of phone calls, metadata

O?Neill v. City of Shoreline, 240 P.3d 1149 (Wash. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Metadata is subject to disclosure pursuant to the Public Records Act

Nature of Case: Public Disclosure Act

Electronic Data Involved: Metadata

Interserve, Inc. v. Fusion Garage, Ltd., 2010 WL 3931100 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 6, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where the court found that defendant?s source code?s metadata ?(i.e. programmer?s notes or comments and other annotations in the source code) ? may be relevant to [plaintiff?s] claims,? the court ordered defendant to produce the metadata but indicated that it could redact the actual source code from the production and produce the metadata subject to the parties? stipulated protective order

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of business ideas, false advertising, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud

Electronic Data Involved: Metadata for source code ?(i.e. programmer?s notes or comments and other annotations in the source code)”

Fleming v. Escort, Inc., 2010 WL 3833995 (D. Idaho Sept. 24, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where plaintiff sought the unredacted source code of defendant?s allegedly infringing products, the court credited plaintiff?s expert testimony that because source code ?generally contains notes by the writer of that code ?that explain to others who come later what the [writer] of the code was trying to accomplish at that portion of the code??, all of the source code was necessary to ensure his correct understanding of all portions and ordered plaintiff to produce the source code pursuant to the parties protective order; in so holding, court noted that ?the dilemma? of having to produce source court for unrelated products was of defendant?s ?own making? because of its business practice of bundling the source code for all of its products together

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Source code

Romero v. Allstate, 2010 WL 4138693 (E.D. Pa. Oct. 21, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court granted plaintiffs? request for production of documents in native format and rejected defendants? arguments that plaintiffs must show a ?particularized need? for metadata where ?multiple courts? have held the burden falls to the objecting party to establish hardship or expense and where defendants failed to show how such a production would negatively impact them and noted that were such a showing necessary, plaintiff would have satisfied it; court ordered parties to meet and confer regarding the search terms, additional custodians, and other ?essential details about [defendants?] search methodology? going forward but declined to compel defendant to disclosure the methods utilized for past searching where such an order would result in undue burden to defendants; court declined to compel defendants to certify that they had complied with their discovery obligations absent evidence of spoliation

Nature of Case: Class action

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, metadata

Brinckerhoff v. Town of Paradise, 2010 WL 4806966 (E.D. Cal. Nov. 18, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Citing plaintiff?s failure to raise the issue of electronic discovery at the discovery conference, her failure to request ESI in discovery, and the lack of hardship in reviewing hard copy produced by defendants, the court generally denied plaintiff?s request to compel production of ESI in native format but, as to an evaluation of plaintiff, the court compelled the production of metadata and reasoned that the revelation of the date created and whether it was modified could be pivotal for the plaintiff

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Tag:Metadata