Motion to Compel – Page 134 – Electronic Discovery Law

RKI, Inc. v. Grimes, 177 F. Supp. 2d 859 (N.D. Ill. 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court granted emergency motion to compel, requiring defendants to appear for deposition and produce computers for inspection by plaintiff’s computer forensics expert; at subsequent bench trial, in light of defendants’ deletion of data from computers after litigation commenced, repeated defragmentation of hard drives prior to court-ordered inspections, and decision not to offer any testimony to explain same, court drew adverse inference; court awarded plaintiff $100,000 as royalty for defendants’ unauthorized use of trade secrets, and $150,000 in punitive damages for the willful and malicious misappropriation of trade secrets and attempted cover-up

Nature of Case: Manufacturer sued former employee and competitor for misappropriation of trade secrets and related torts

Electronic Data Involved: Software and databases containing sales and customer information

Vitalo v. Cabot Corp., 212 F.R.D. 472 (E.D. Pa. 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Plaintiffs required to produce air modeling information and draft reports prepared by colleague of expert witnesses, which were considered by experts in forming their opinions

Nature of Case: Personal injury arising from emissions from beryllium plant

Electronic Data Involved: Air modeling information and draft reports sent via email

Adams v. Dan River Mills, Inc., 54 F.R.D. 220 (W.D. Va. 1972)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court granted plaintiffs’ motion to compel production of defendant’s current computerized master payroll file and all computer print-outs for W-2 forms of defendant’s employees, given accuracy of records and inexpensiveness of production

Nature of Case: Race discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Computerized master payroll file

Cumis Ins. Co. v. Diebold, Inc., 2004 WL 1126173 (E.D. Pa. May 20, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court ordered defendant to respond to document requests by searching its electronic storage devices and electronic data compilations; plaintiff convinced court that defendant may not have satisfied its discovery obligations by showing that responsive Diebold documents and emails had been obtained from other sources, but had yet to be produced by Diebold itself

Nature of Case: Insurance coverage

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

In re Grand Jury Subpoena Dated June 30, 2003, 770 N.Y.S.2d 568 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: DA’s application to compel witnesses to answer questions granted: attorney/client privilege did not preclude attorneys representing individuals connected to events surrounding homicide from answering questions about laptop that was instrumentality of crime

Nature of Case: Grand jury proceedings investigating homicide

Electronic Data Involved: Laptop

In re Lowe’s Companies, Inc., 134 S.W.3d 876 (Tex. App. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Trial court’s order requiring witness to bring with her a computer or have access at the time of her deposition to a computer capable of logging onto the database and capable of searching, sorting and printing the data on the computer as requested by plaintiff’s counsel in the deposition was overbroad and vacated; however, witness would be required to testify about database since defendant had failed to establish that database was a trade secret

Nature of Case: Personal injury from falling merchandise

Electronic Data Involved: Database re accidents and injuries occurring at Lowe’s stores

Samide v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, 773 N.Y.S.2d 116 (N.Y. App. Div. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court modified prior order directing defendants to produce contents of hard drives for in camera inspection; individual defendants now directed to produce hard copies of all emails relating to allegations against certain individual, including any deleted emails recovered by a qualified expert appointed by the referee supervising the discovery; only those emails that in fact deal with relevant allegations to be turned over to the plaintiff; plaintiff agreed to bear all costs related to recovery of data from hard drive

Nature of Case: Sex discrimination, negligent supervision and breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email and deleted email on hard drives of individual defendants

Ex Parte Wal-Mart, Inc., 809 So.2d 818 (Ala. 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Mandamus relief granted; “run” from database to be narrowed to retrieve only falling-merchandise incidents within geographic and temporal limits set forth by trial court

Nature of Case: Negligence, premises liability

Electronic Data Involved: Run from computer database

Allen v. Armstrong, 2004 WL 1533934 (D. Conn. Apr. 5, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Order memorialized parties’ agreement regarding motion to compel: defendants agreed to produce all emails that exist in printed form, but would not conduct search of electronic database to retrieve emails since it would be cost prohibitive; defendant understood it would be precluded from offering evidence at trial that was not properly disclosed in discovery

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Cummings v. Gen. Motors Corp., 365 F.3d 944 (10th Cir. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

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

Tag:Motion to Compel