Metadata – Page 11 – Electronic Discovery Law

Mintel Int?l Group, Ltd. v. Neerghen, 2010 WL 145786 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 12, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court declined to grant spoliation sanctions for the destruction of metadata resulting from defendant?s continued use of his company-issued laptop where such use was not prohibited by the temporary restraining order and was not shown to destroy relevant evidence and where there was no evidence of defendant?s bad faith

Nature of Case: Violation of Trade Secrets Act, Computer Fraud Abuse Act and terms of employment contract

Electronic Data Involved: Metadata

Irwin v. Onondaga County Res. Recovery Agency, 895 N.Y.S.2d 262 (N.Y. App. Div. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Appellate court modified amended order of the lower court and granted plaintiff?s petition to compel production of certain electronically stored photographs and the associated ?system? metadata in response to plaintiff?s FOIL request; court was careful to limit scope of holding to the present case such that the opinion did not address ?the issue concerning whether and when metadata of any nature is subject to disclosure under the CPLR? (Civil Practice Law Rules)

Nature of Case: Freedom of Information request

Electronic Data Involved: Electronically stored photographs and associated “system” metadata

Lorentz v. Sunshine Health Prods., Inc., 2010 WL 1856265 (S.D. Fla. May 10, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court granted motion for protective order where plaintiff?s request for inspection of defendants? hard drives was found ?per se overbroad and unduly burdensome when balanced against the need cited? and where plaintiff failed to explain whether a less intrusive option had been attempted, ?as per Rule 34?; despite granting the motion, court noted willingness to entertain a motion to inspect a particular hard drive if provided with a protocol for such inspection indicating a method to protect the non-responsive data

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

Continental Group, Inc. v. KW Prop. Mgmt., LLC, 2009 WL 1098461 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 22, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where defendant accessed relevant files after being placed on notice of litigation and thus spoliated metadata, but where defendant?s testimony regarding her lack of knowledge that accessing the files would destroy metadata was credible and where plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of showing bad faith, plaintiffs? motion for adverse inference was denied

Nature of Case: Violations of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, breach of restrictive covenant contracts, tortious interference with customer relationships, among others

Electronic Data Involved: Metadata

Kravetz v. Paul Rever Life Ins. Co., 2009 WL 1639736 (D. Ariz. June 11, 2009) (Not for Publication)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: For purposes of determining the number of hours worked by plaintiff following his injury, court granted motion to compel the production of several hard drives and storage devices used by plaintiff to conduct business but limited the inspection to relevant metadata and forbade inspection of the substance of any documents

Nature of Case: Disability claim

Electronic Data Involved: Metadata on hard drives

Commonwealth v. Lanana, 7 Pa. D. & C. 5th 225 (2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where school?s IT manager discovered child pornography on defendant?s personal computer and where upon opening those files the IT manager altered relevant metadata, appellate court upheld trial court?s denial of defendant?s motion for spoliation sanctions because the police did not commit the alleged destruction, because there was no evidence of the IT manager?s bad faith, because both parties had access to the same information, because defendant had an opportunity to explore the loss at trial and because defendant stipulated that the files were child pornography

Nature of Case: Possession of child pornography

Electronic Data Involved: Metadata

Ojeda-Sanchez v. Bland Farms LLC, 2009 WL 2365976 (S.D. Ga. July 31, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: In unpaid wages case, court ordered production of data from database in native format ?so that the metadata [could] be examined,? where plaintiffs demonstrated a particular need for the information, i.e., the need to determine how workers? pay was calculated; court excused defendants from the need to produce the information in Excel format to the extent the files requested were too large to export

Nature of Case: Unpaid wages

Electronic Data Involved: ESI from database

FSP Stallion 1, LLC v. Luce, 2009 WL 2177107 (D. Nev. July 21, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where parties disagreed regarding the format of production and the need to produce and re-produce ESI with certain metadata, court ordered production of historical accounting data in native format, and for the production of responsive ESI ?in the form of TIF images or other agreed upon file format with the associated metadata?and the OCR file?; court allowed previously redacted privileged documents to be scanned to preserve the privilege

Nature of Case: Claims arising in part from false and misleading statements and omissions concerning financial condition of Golf Club

Electronic Data Involved: Financial information, emails, ESI

In re Netbank Sec. Litig., 2009 WL 2461036 (N.D.Ga. Aug. 7, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Court ordered production of ESI in native format, despite defendants? objections that such production was not required by the federal rules, allowed for the alteration of documents, and prevented bates labeling, among other reasons, where defendants? problems were deemed ?hypothetical? and where plaintiff ?definitively stated? that the provision of TIFF documents both made the review more expensive and served to conceal metadata

Nature of Case: Class action securities litigation

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Tag:Metadata