Metadata – Page 7 – Electronic Discovery Law

Apparent, Inc. v. Ai-Daiwa, Ltd., No. C 13-04156 VC (LB), 2014 WL 3738348 (N.D. Cal. July 28, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where defendant raised seven problems with plaintiff’s ESI production and sought an order compelling plaintiff to hire a qualified e-discovery vendor, court denied the request because plaintiff was addressing the problems and the circumstances of the case did not support “the potentially expensive outcome of a private vendor” given the short relevant time period and limited universe of documents; court further remarked: ?That being said, generally documents should be produced electronically (not in hard copy), and native file production (or at least processed ESI that contains relevant metadata) is better than paper production.?

Nature of Case: Breach of contract, product defect

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Sexton v. Lecavalier, 11 F. Supp. 3d 439 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 11, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court declined to hold third party in contempt where failure to produce Gmail in native format was result of good faith (but mistaken) belief that Gmail emails cannot be produced in native format; opinion noted options for production of Gmail emails in native format

Electronic Data Involved: Gmail emails

Dover v. British Airways, PLC (UK), No. CV 2012-5567 (RJD)(MDG), 2014 WL 4065084 (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 15, 2014), affirmed, Dover v. British Airways, PLC (UK), No. CV 2012-5567 (RJD)(MDG), 2014 WL 5090021 (E.D.N.Y. Oct. 9, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where parties entered into a stipulated protective order approved by the court that contained a provision concerning inadvertent disclosures, and plaintiffs inadvertently produced the protected information on the spreadsheets twice and conceded they were “careless,” court did not find plaintiffs’ conduct to be so “completely reckless” as to warrant a finding of waiver given the totality of the circumstances and particularly the nature of the production, plaintiffs’ prompt request for return of the protected information, and the overriding issues of fairness

Nature of Case: Class action alleging that defendant British Airways violated its frequent flyer program contract by imposing unlawful fuel surcharges on rewards flights

Electronic Data Involved: Spreadsheets prepared by non-testifying, consulting experts

Melian Labs, Inc. v. Triology, LLC, No. 13-cv-04791-SBA (KAW), 2014 WL 4386439 (N.D. Cal. Sep. 4, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court denied defendant?s motion to compel production of all emails and spreadsheets in native format, since the parties? Joint Rule 26(f) Report was a stipulation and therefore Rule 34(b) did not govern their dispute; the parties? Joint Rule 26(f) Report did not require that all ESI be produced electronically but only stated that ESI may be produced in paper, PDF, or TIFF and that electronic files should be produced in native format when it was more practicable to do so; defendant failed to articulate why metadata was important to emails; and plaintiff had already produced some of its spreadsheets in native format (Excel) where the printouts were difficult to read

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email and spreadsheets

Alter v. Rocky Pt. Sch. Dist., No. 13-1100 (JS)(AKT), 2014 WL 4966119 (E.D.N.Y. Sep. 30, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Notwithstanding court?s finding that defendants lost materials due to their negligence in failing to: (1) institute a litigation hold until more than two years after plaintiff filed her notice of claim, (2) discuss a litigation hold with named individual defendants and other key players, (3) preserve all ESI regarding plaintiff from named individual defendants and all key custodians in separate backup tapes or in some other medium, or (4) preserve work-related ESI utilized by key players on their personal computers or other devices, court declined to impose spoliation sanctions as it found no intent on the part of defendants to spoliate material evidence and plaintiff failed to meet burden of showing with some degree of factual detail that lost materials were relevant or helpful in prosecuting her claim; court further denied plaintiff?s request for appointment of independent forensic computer expert, but did impose $1,500 sanction against school district and its counsel given that court found merit to some of plaintiff?s arguments

Nature of Case: Workplace discrimination claims

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, emails

Harry Weiss, Inc. v. Moskowitz, — N.Y.S.2d —, 2013 WL 2341806 (N.Y. App. Ct. May 30, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Sanction precluding plaintiff from presenting evidence or testimony in opposition to defendant?s defenses and counterclaims affirmed where plaintiff failed for two years to reveal that relevant ESI had been lost after it was allegedly printed; claimed that the relevant computer was ?broken? and had been discarded when defendant sought a forensic examination; and failed to issue a litigation hold; appellate court rejected contention that the disposal did not prejudice defendant because the files had been printed where that claim was contradicted at deposition and where hard copy did not contain metadata

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, hard drive/computer

Kwan Software Eng?g, Inc. v. Foray Techs., LLC, No. C 12-03762 SI, 2013 WL 5487421 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 1, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Where parties agreed to production of ESI in searchable form with metadata but Defendant produced TIFF images without metadata, court ordered re-production of ESI in accordance with parties’ agreement and amended the pretrial schedule

Electronic Data Involved: ESI and metadata

Amdocs (Israel) Ltd. v. Openet Telecom, Inc., No. 1:10cv910 (LMB/TRJ), 2013 WL 1192947 (E.D. Va. Mar. 21, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Court found that ?costs of converting the documents in the format agreed upon by the parties are properly taxable? but that ?metadata extraction? could not be ?properly analogized to making copies and that such costs were not taxable; where costs associated with metadata extraction were not identified separately from ?production copying, file conversion, and metadata extraction? on invoices, court reduced requested costs by one third

Nature of Case: Patent Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: taxable costs for electronic discovery

Home Instead, Inc. v. Florance, No. 8:12CV264, 2013 WL 5979629 (D. Neb. Nov. 8, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Finding defendants? effort to respond to discovery inadequate in various respects, court granted plaintiff’s motion to compel and ordered defendants: (1) to provide detailed listing of all documents responsive to plaintiff’s discovery and in defendants’ possession, custody or control as of date of discovery requests, but which were not produced because defendants destroyed, deleted, sold, shredded or otherwise discarded them, along with a description of how and when defendants lost control or possession of such information, (2) to further search for and respond to discovery, produce any additional discovery located, and explain by written affidavit, as to each separate document request, the efforts made to locate responsive documents, and (3) to provide a sworn affidavit outlining whether a litigation hold was put in place, persons to whom litigation hold letter was sent, directions for preservation, sources identified for search, search terms used and efforts to ensure compliance with litigation hold; court further faulted defendants? production of one large PDF that contained no metadata, no indication of parent-child document relationship, and no indication as to the beginning and end of each document, and ordered defendants to produce responsive information in a manner that complied with the Federal Rules

Nature of Case: Franchise dispute involving claims for violation of non-compete clause, misappropriation of trade secrets and license marks, and other claims

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Athome Care, Inc. v. The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Soc?y, No. 1:12-cv-053-BLW, 2013 WL 1819691 (D. Idaho Apr. 30, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Court addressed Plaintiff?s motion to compel production of metadata and, noting that Defendant ?would have produced the requested metadata but for an inadvertent change to the creation date on certain documents,? indicated that the real question was ?how to resolve that mistake, which essentially requires the court to apply the Rule 26(b)(2)(C) balancing test;? court considered fact that Defendant ?created the problem? although not in bad faith (?accidents happen?) and further found that the burden of production was not ?all that great? and ordered the production of the requested metadata

Nature of Case: Breach of contract/licensing agreement

Electronic Data Involved: metadata

Tag:Metadata