Key Insight: Applying the Rowe balancing test, court denied producing party’s motion to require requesting party to pay costs associated with computerized privilege review estimated to cost $28,000-40,000
Nature of Case: Copyright infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets
Electronic Data Involved: 8 hard drives
Key Insight: No abuse of discretion to deny enforcement of subpoena directed to plaintiffs’ nonparty company where defendants had already deposed plaintiffs and conceded that the company would have no additional information, plaintiffs would be designated Rule 30(b)(6) witnesses if discovery were allowed, and plaintiffs had already produced email from their business accounts and remained under a continuing obligation to supplement their earlier productions
Nature of Case: Ancillary proceeding to enforce subpoena
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Court granted plaintiffs’ motion to compel defendants to respond to interrogatories and requests for admissions relating to database compiled by plaintiffs that contained factual information as property address, owners, purchase dates, dates of club membership, and religious affiliation
Nature of Case: Property owners sued yacht club alleging discriminatory practices
Electronic Data Involved: Database
Key Insight: Applying Zubulake balancing test, court ordered parties to share equally the cost of extracting source code from defendant’s database; however, defendant solely to bear cost of copying source code for production once it is extracted
Nature of Case: Infringement action
Electronic Data Involved: Source code
Key Insight: No abuse of discretion to deny motion to compel access to GM’s databases and grant protective order to GM where plaintiffs’ proposed computer database searches were overly broad in scope, duplicative of prior requests and unduly burdensome
Nature of Case: Personal injury
Electronic Data Involved: Database
Key Insight: Court clarified its July 7, 2004 order and explained how it intended the costs of compiling the database would be calculated: the number of hours plaintiffs’ computer expert and the paralegals spent on the project, multiplied by their respective hourly billing rates, plus other costs, if any; court quashed defendants’ discovery requests seeking information regarding the salaries paid to computer expert and the paralegals
Nature of Case: Class action for civil rights violations
Electronic Data Involved: Database compiled at direction of plaintiffs’ attorneys
Key Insight: Former client’s discovery requests, including request for hard drives of lawyer’s computers that had generated documents pertaining to client, were overbroad, oppressive and annoying
Nature of Case: Fee dispute between lawyer and former client
Electronic Data Involved: Computer hard drive
Key Insight: District judge upheld magistrate’s decision
Nature of Case: Concert promoters sued booking agencies and other promoters for discriminatory and anti-competitive practices
Electronic Data Involved: Email stored on backup tapes and hard drives
Key Insight: Court granted defendant’s motion to compel production where defendant agreed to limit scope of email request; further, court rejected defendant’s undue burden objection to plaintiff’s discovery requests where defense counsel argued that retrieval of responsive information would be time-consuming because it involved cross-referencing many databases and backup tapes, but did not submit the information in the form of a declaration
Nature of Case: Trademark infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets and related torts
Electronic Data Involved: Email; vendor information relating to 278 products
Key Insight: Claiming that it had already spent approximately $1.4 million to restore, review and produce email, and may have to expend as much as $3 million more in order to complete the document review and production, nonparty unsuccessfully attempted to avoid compliance with discovery orders in state proceeding by seeking injunctive and declaratory relief in federal court
Nature of Case: Action for declaratory and injunctive relief
Electronic Data Involved: Email stored on backup tapes
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