Motion to Compel – Page 120 – Electronic Discovery Law

Powertrain, Inc. v. Honda Motor Co., Inc. v. 2006 WL 709784 (N.D. Miss. Mar. 15, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court granted plaintiff’s request for Rule 56(f) continuance and dismissed defendant’s motion for summary judgment as premature and with leave to refile once defendant had fulfilled all its discovery obligations, where plaintiff had already filed a number of discovery motions and sought, among other things, “information contained in emails which appear to have been deleted by Honda as part of its corporate policy (and which are the subject of a separate Motion for Order Preserving Electronic Data, to Recover[] Deleted Data and Show Cause which is pending before the magistrate)”

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Deleted email

New World Sys. Corp. v. Jones, 2006 WL 1234901 (E.D. Mich. May 5, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court set hearing date for plaintiff’s motion for expedited discovery and granted in part and denied in part defendants’ motion for expedited discovery; plaintiff agreed to allow defense counsel access to laptop computer that individual defendant possessed while in the employ of plaintiff, for the purpose of making a mirror image of the hard drive for examination by a computer forensics expert hired by defendant; court allowed defense counsel 14 days after the hard drive was “mirrored” to conduct expedited discovery subject to confidentiality order agreed to by parties

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets, violation of non-compete

Electronic Data Involved: Laptop computer

A/R Roofing, L.L.C. v. Certainteed Corp., 2006 WL 2381610 (D. Kan. Aug. 16, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Where the font used by plaintiff’s expert in his hard copy list of customer estimates and contracts was ?incredibly small? and difficult to read without magnification, thus rendering hard copy list inadequate, and because defendant’s request for production of material in electronic form was not otherwise prohibited by scheduling order, court granted defendant’s motion to compel the data in electronic format

Nature of Case: Plaintiff claimed loss of business resulting from letter sent by defendant

Electronic Data Involved: Customer list

Satchell v. Fedex Express, 2006 WL 2884318 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 10, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court granted motion to compel and motion for sanctions, requiring defendant to produce additional documents and file a sworn declaration describing all steps taken to locate particular items; to the extent that defendant’s production did not include responsive documents because they ceased to exist in either paper or electronic format, defendant required to file a sworn declaration stating when it destroyed or ceased to retain these documents, and the policies or reasons for their destruction; to the extent defendant contended that it already produced any of the documents described, defendant to provide a sworn declaration identifying the Bates numbers that correspond to the type of document; defendant further ordered to pay plaintiffs’ reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs associated with the motion

Nature of Case: Class action employment litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Personnel records

Jacobson v. Starbucks Coffee Co., 2006 WL 3146349 (D. Kan. Oct. 31, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court imposed monetary sanctions, ordered defendant to submit to Rule 30(b)(6) deposition regarding its efforts to locate and produce responsive documents, and ordered defendant to produce key player’s computer for inspection by plaintiff, where evidence showed that the home and/or work computers of a key player and several witnesses had not been searched for responsive documents

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drive; computerized records

Wedding & Event Videographers Ass’n Int’l, Inc. v. Videoccasion, Inc., 2006 WL 821809 (M.D. Fla. Mar. 28, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Where defense counsel withdrew defendants’ objections to plaintiff’s request to inspect, at its expense, defendants’ computers, court denied as moot plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Inspection of Defendants’ Computers, Other Electric Equipment and Electronic Storage Devices and ordered the parties to include a stipulated plan for electronic discovery in their Case Management Report

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement, deceptive and unfair business practice, conversion

Electronic Data Involved: Defendants’ computers

MBNA Am. Bank, N.A. v. Cioe & Wagenblast, P.C., 2006 WL 1408402 (N.D. Ind. May 19, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court denied motion to reconsider prior discovery ruling that MBNA was not entitled to production of responsive correspondence on diskette, stating that MBNA had remedies under the FRCP if defendants failed to produce legible paper copies as ordered in the prior ruling; court also flatly rejected any attempt by MBNA to obtain discovery through inspection of defendants’ computer hard drives

Nature of Case: Bank alleged firm had conducted “sham” arbitrations with bank’s cardholders

Electronic Data Involved: Word processing files

In re ULLICO Inc. Litig., 237 F.R.D. 314 (D.D.C. 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Where court found that ULLICO had in bad faith “grossly abused” the use of the “confidential” designation allowed under parties’ stipulated protective order, court ordered ULLICO to completely re-do its confidentiality designations and also ensure that the documents were correctly identified in parties’ joint discovery database

Nature of Case: ERISA litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Confidential documents, joint discovery database

In re Exxon Corp., 208 S.W.3d 70 (Tex. App. 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: After concluding that personal injury plaintiffs had failed to establish any document withholding or other discovery abuse by Exxon, state appellate court conditionally granted writ of mandamus and directed the trial court to vacate its orders requiring Exxon to present a deponent to testify about documents that had been requested, specifically as to: (1) existence; (2) electronic creation, duplication and storage; (3) document retention and destruction policies; (4) location; (5) organization, indexing and filing; (6) method of search; (7) completeness; and (8) authenticity

Nature of Case: Petition for writ of mandamus

Electronic Data Involved: Rule 30(b)(6) deposition

Christopher v. Tulsa Ambassador Hotel, L.L.C., 2006 WL 3626761 (N.D. Okla. Dec. 11, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Magistrate judge was within his discretion to order that original discs be produced for computer expert’s inspection and copying so that all parties could be satisfied as to the authenticity and integrity of the copies provided

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Computer discs onto which plaintiff had copied various files of defendant

Tag:Motion to Compel