Key Insight: District court did not abuse its discretion when it denied plaintiff?s motion for spoliation sanctions, since plaintiff offered no specific evidence that any of the destroyed emails contained relevant information
Nature of Case: Claimed violations of the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities and Exchange Acts
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Where defendants had not shown that plaintiff’s initial disclosures or discovery responses were incomplete or incorrect and parties were not subject to any court order requiring them to produce documents created after the discovery deadline, and applicable legal authority was scant and fairly debatable, court declined to decide whether plaintiff was required to produce emails created after the close of discovery and ruled that plaintiff?s conduct was not sanctionable
Nature of Case: Plaintiff sued publisher alleging breach of a promise to keep his name and employer confidential
Electronic Data Involved: Email created after close of discovery
Key Insight: Court ordered that non-party law firm’s hard drive be imaged, and that law firm (not plaintiff) would be entitled to select computer forensic expert to conduct cloning process; court further ordered parties to confer on details and set basic timeframe for cloning and review of material, and ruled that plaintiff would be responsible for costs associated with search and production
Nature of Case: Proceeding to determine the validity of a right of election
Electronic Data Involved: Law firm computer
Key Insight: Upon remand from district court judge, magistrate set out various reasons why he denied plaintiffs’ motion to the extent it sought to impose sanctions for defendant’s alleged failure to produce all spreadsheet materials in native format, its failure to timely produce spreadsheet materials, and its conduct in re-producing spreadsheet materials in non-native format that had already been produced in native format
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Spreadsheets
Key Insight: Court awarded $22,371 in sanctions representing plaintiff’s reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred in connection with earlier motion to compel that court granted on November 14, 2006; court further ordered that plaintiff’s second motion to compel relating to the same issues would be set for hearing
Nature of Case: UCC claims arising from defendant’s Internet-based check service
Electronic Data Involved: Databases
Key Insight: After conducting de novo review of the matters raised by defendant’s objections to magistrate judge’s May 22, 2007 order, district court adopted magistrate judge’s recommended sanction (i.e., denying defendant’s motion to dismiss and imposing monetary sanctions) and ordered defendant to file answer to complaint within 10 days
Nature of Case: UCC claims arising from defendant’s Internet-based check service
Electronic Data Involved: Databases
Key Insight: Where object of two prior orders granting plaintiff’s motion for sanctions and to compel immediate backup and imaging of certain defendants’ computers was preservation of evidence, court denied plaintiff’s later motion for order adopting 170-word search protocol that was separate and apart from any particular discovery request, since prior orders did not “contemplate that ClearOne have carte blanche access to the electronic data filtered only by keyword searching and privilege objections”
Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, conversion
Electronic Data Involved: Mirror images of hard drives
Key Insight: Although spoliation was shown based on individual plaintiff’s failure to return laptop to defendant for approximately seven months after court first ordered him to do so, destruction of files and other information and use of file-deletion and free-space wiping products on laptop, court denied motion to dismiss complaint as spoliation sanction because prejudice to defendant was not established — three months of discovery remained and it was not clear that defendant would not be able to obtain much of the evidence sought
Nature of Case: Racial discrimination, retaliation, hostile work environment and wrongful termination
Electronic Data Involved: Employer-issued laptop
Key Insight: Court denied Spain’s motion to reconsider November 3, 2006 Opinion and Order rejecting the various reasons offered as support
Nature of Case: Litigation brought by the government of Spain arising from shipping casualty and oil spill
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Where court had earlier ordered production and inspection of defendants’ computer, but had also entered a protective order governing such production and inspection, court declined to sanction defendants and found that the most “just manner” to apportion fees and costs was for each of the parties to pay their own
Nature of Case: Plaintiffs claimed defendants wrongfully disclosed plaintiffs’ confidential medical information stored on a computer hard drive by placing the computer on the curb for trash disposal
Electronic Data Involved: Computer hard drive of subject computer
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