Motion to Compel – Page 116 – Electronic Discovery Law

Armament Sys. & Procedures, Inc. v. IQ Hong Kong Ltd., 2007 WL 895836 (E.D. Wis. Mar. 21, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Court ordered plaintiff to produce mirror image copies of hard drives at location of defendants’ computer forensics expert, since court saw no reason to treat such discovery differently than traditional (paper) discovery, any privacy concerns were addressed in the protocol proposed by defendants, and it was less burdensome than forcing defendants’ experts to conduct their testing at the site of plaintiff’s experts

Nature of Case: Patent litigation involving claims of forgery and fraud

Electronic Data Involved: Mirror image of hard drive

Doe v. Morey Charter Sch., 2007 WL 2331864 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 14, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: District court overruled plaintiff’s objections to magistrate judge’s order denying in part motion to compel since order was not clearly erroneous; although plaintiff argued that more material should have been produced, defendants represented that they had produced everything and magistrate judge noted that both sides’ counsel had access to mirror images of hard drives containing the requested data which had been seized in police investigation

Nature of Case: Allegations of sexual abuse and harrassment by former elementary school teacher

Electronic Data Involved: Email and other ESI

Manning v. Gen. Motors, 2007 WL 4246047 (D. Kan. Dec. 4, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Although court found it ?difficult to imagine? that defendant did not possess any responsive electronic or paper documents, plaintiff submitted no information upon which to question defendant?s representation and court had no basis to compel production; court instead required defendant to supplement discovery responses unconditionally representing that no responsive documents were in its possession, custody or control

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic records identifying vacant positions at GM plant

Muro v. Target Corp., 243 F.R.D. 301 (N.D. Ill. 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Court granted plaintiff?s motion to compel production of documents listed on defendants? privilege log, faulting among other things Target?s failure to identify and describe separately on its privilege log each allegedly privileged message within a string of email communications

Nature of Case: Putative class action alleging violations of Truth in Lending Act

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged email

Peak Interests, LLC v. Tara Hills Villas, Inc., 2007 WL 2993817 (D. Neb. Oct. 11, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Where plaintiff objected to producing laptop because it contained irrelevant confidential or proprietary information and promised to ?provide all requested data, in the electronic format in which it was created,? but production was not forthcoming, and, despite promise to do so plaintiff did not submit affidavit from computer consultant affirming that efforts to retrieve responsive information from laptop had been unsuccessful, court ordered plaintiff to deliver laptop to defense counsel for physical inspection and copying by a neutral third party; court restricted access to any non-responsive information retrieved to counsel of record, their experts, and necessary support staff

Nature of Case: Lease dispute

Electronic Data Involved: Laptop

In re Maura, 842 N.Y.S.2d 851 (N.Y. Sur. Ct. 2007)

Dec 01 2007

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

Wiley v. Paulson, 2007 WL 7059722 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 26, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Court denied motion to compel metadata associated with hard copy emails where government established the metadata was not reasonably accessible because of substantial and prohibitive burden and cost; court denied motion without prejudice leaving room for plaintiff to re-file her motion and establish a factual bases for her demand and noted that if such a motion were granted in future, plaintiff would bear the cost

Nature of Case: Employment litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Metadata associated with hard copy emails

G.D. v. Monarch Plastic Surgery, P.A., 2007 WL 201154 (D. Kan. Jan. 24, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Court granted motion to compel defendants to produce the subject computer for inspection, appointed an expert to conduct the examination whose fees would be shared by the parties, and set out two distinct procedures for production of the computer ? one for reviewing the computer?s hardware, software, and operating system and one for reviewing information stored on the computer

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

Frye v. St. Thomas Health Servs., 2007 WL 908059 (Tenn. Ct. App. Mar. 26, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: State appellate court found no error in trial court’s order denying plaintiff’s motion to compel production of certain hard drives of defendant for the purpose of allowing an expert to determine whether they contained relevant email, since discovery requests at issue made no mention of hard drives

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Email, hard drives

JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. v. Neovi, Inc., 2007 WL 1514005 (S.D. Ohio May 22, 2007)

Dec 01 2007

Key Insight: Where magistrate judge found that defendant “deliberately and stubbornly refused to produce the most basic information about its Ohio contacts and has likely destroyed much of that information after it put those contacts directly at issue,” magistrate judge denied defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction as least drastic discovery sanction and awarded plaintiff its reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred in connection with the sanctions motion

Nature of Case: UCC claims arising from defendant’s Internet-based check service

Electronic Data Involved: Database

Tag:Motion to Compel