Motion to Compel – Page 125 – Electronic Discovery Law

Reino de Espana v. Am. Bureau of Shipping, 2006 WL 3208579 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 3, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Where Spain failed to place a timely and adequate litigation hold in its agencies and ministries, court found that Spain violated its discovery obligations under the FRCP and observed that relevant email and electronic records probably no longer existed; court granted defendant’s motion to compel and invited defendant to to file an application requesting the relief, remedy, or sanction it deemed appropriate in light of the court?s findings

Nature of Case: Litigation brought by the government of Spain arising from shipping casualty and oil spill

Electronic Data Involved: Email and electronic records

Marshall & Swift, L.P. v. Crawford & Co., 2006 WL 319262 (N.D. Ga. Feb. 9, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court granted defendant’s motion for reconsideration and clarification of order extending discovery cut off, confirming that defendant would be allowed to engage in limited discovery in order to rebut plaintiff’s evidence of software usage documented in plaintiff’s spreadsheets, and to explore the source data for entries on the spreadsheets

Nature of Case: Plaintiff sought damages stemming from defendant’s use of plaintiff’s claims software

Electronic Data Involved: Spreadsheet

United States ex rel. Fago v. M & T Mortgage Corp., 235 F.R.D. 11 (D.D.C. 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Granting in part and denying in part plaintiff’s motion to compel, court ordered defendant to submit a brief showing cause why, if it so contends, it is not capable of pulling names of persons who audited each of the 108 loans from its electronic archives and, if it is capable of so doing, why, if it so contends, the burden of pulling such information would be prohibitive

Nature of Case: Former employee alleged that her former employer violated False Claims Act

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic data and email

Smith v. Clark, 2006 WL 1656485 (S.D. Ga. June 12, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court ordered defendants to produce “an exact computer disc copy of the actual Quickbooks program used by Defendants to compile their data”

Nature of Case: Construction litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Quickbooks program

Lewis v. Sch. Dist. #70, 2006 WL 2506465 (S.D. Ill. Aug. 25, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff’s motion to compel further response to overbroad request for all emails, finding that defendants’ production of all existing emails sent to or from plaintiff, or pertaining to plaintiff’s performance during relevant time period was a reasonable attempt to provide responsive information; court further rejected plaintiff’s motion for an order to show cause regarding possible spoliation, concluding that it was not reasonable for defendants “to have foreseen that all e-mails would be relevant to plaintiff’s situation”

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Email

MacNamara v. City of New York, 2006 WL 3298911 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 13, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court ordered production of handwritten worksheets used to compile database in light of demonstrated data entry errors that made accuracy of database printouts suspect; court also sustained objection to request for “all electronic data concerning RNC arrests” as impermissibly vague

Nature of Case: Litigation arising from arrests during 2004 Republican National Convention

Electronic Data Involved: Worksheets underlying database

Discover Fin. Servs., Inc. v. Visa U.S.A., Inc., 2006 WL 3462125 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 29, 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Court declined to compel American Express to search for email sent from and to certain executives who were no longer employed by American Express, since the moving parties had not agreed to search for email sent from or to their own former executives and American Express had already produced some 27,501 emails sent to or from certain former executives through the production of email from other custodians

Nature of Case: Antitrust

Electronic Data Involved: Email of former executives

Chavannes v. Protective Life Ins. Co., 232 F.R.D. 698 (S.D. Fla. 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Where plaintiff had originally asserted work product protection regarding videotape recording of insured’s funeral, but failed to adequately explain the circumstances which led to his statements that the video existed or the circumstances surrounding his claimed discovery that no such video existed, court ordered plaintiff to produce video or explain in detail any reasons for non-production

Nature of Case: Beneficiary sued insurer to recover death benefit

Electronic Data Involved: Videotape recording of funeral

In re Benun, 339 B.R. 115 (Bankr. D.N.J. 2006)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: Where trustee, in a practical attempt to maximize assets and minimize expenses, attempted to reach blanket accord with patent holder’s counsel that document inspection would not serve as a waiver of the attorney-client privilege, disclosure of privileged document was inadvertent and did not constitute waiver; court denied patent holder’s motion to depose attorney who had represented both debtor and his corporation in infringement action and compel production of certain documents from attorney’s files

Nature of Case: Lengthy adversary proceeding brought by party suing debtor for patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Hard copy documents and “massive hard drive” assembled by bankruptcy trustee for safekeeping

Oved & Assocs. Constr. Servs., Inc. v. Los Angeles County Met. Transp. Auth., 2006 WL 1703824 (Cal. App. June 22, 2006) (Nonpublished, Noncitable)

Dec 01 2006

Key Insight: No abuse of discretion to impose terminating sanctions against plaintiff after years of “discovery stonewalling” which culminated in the intentional destruction of evidence; plaintiff “regularly and routinely” disobeyed trial court orders and intentionally destroyed relevant accounting records on hard drive that was to be mirror imaged

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of funds

Electronic Data Involved: Accounting files on hard drive

Tag:Motion to Compel