Key Insight: Slow responses to discovery; withholding information; Discovery fraud
Nature of Case: Personal Injury
Electronic Data Involved: Not specifically stated “documents”
Keywords: Attorney Fees; Bad Faith; Withholding information; Misconduct; Sanctions must be compensatory not punitive; Court’s inherent authority; But-For test
Key Insight: A program to parse relevant data from an existing database may trump usual course of business format
Nature of Case: Telephone Consumer Protection Act
Electronic Data Involved: Electronic list of wrong phone calls
Keywords: computer program, usual course of business,
Key Insight: Discovery of these things was blocked, since they were ruled to be only marginally relevant compared to the time and expense it would take to produce them.
Nature of Case: Employment Discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: emails and text messages
Keywords: relevance, marginal relevance, time and expense
Key Insight: Plaintiff objected to discovery requests and added that it was withholding documents pursuant to this objection . Judge suggested a clearer response would have been preferred, but denied motion to compel.
Nature of Case: State Statute Constitutionality
Electronic Data Involved: ESI – Communications and Documents
Keywords: Objection; Withhold
Key Insight: defendant ordered to produce Salesforce “background data” without cost shifting
Nature of Case: wage and hour
Electronic Data Involved: salesforce “background data”
Keywords: background data; cost shifting; gap in records
Key Insight: Conduct discovery in good faith; Maintain a civil tone in communications; Purge of emails
Nature of Case: Employment Discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: ESI; email; SMS; Text messages
Keywords: Good Faith; Proportionality; Meet and confer; Rule 16 – Scope of discovery; Purge of emails; Complete breakdown of discovery
Key Insight: no intentional destruction of evidence, mere negligence in not maintaining record of accidents in Qualcomm/PeopleNet
Nature of Case: negligence, loss of consortium, punitive damages
Electronic Data Involved: Qualcomm data, PeopleNet server data
Keywords: Spoliation
Key Insight: plaintiff is seeking notices of litigation sent to co-insurers by defendant and defendant claims work product and privilege.
Nature of Case: MDL against drug companies for damages for allegedly contaminated blood products.
Electronic Data Involved: post-litigation communications with co-insurers and re-insurers.
Keywords: work product, privilege, notice to insurers, scope of coverage
Key Insight: Whether a determination of an inadvertent production of documents was erroneous or that the attorney didn’t follow reasonable steps to prevent disclosure.
Nature of Case: Personal Injury, insurance bad faith
Electronic Data Involved: Inadvertently produced documents, produced work product/ACP
Keywords: work product, inadvertent disclosure, claw back, reasonable steps to avoid disclosure
Key Insight: Is expedited discovery warranted, and how extensive can Twitch seek discovery on the bot company. Are the non-respnding defendants’ financial informations avle to be discovered?
Nature of Case: Trademark, Contract, unfair competition, cybersquatting
Electronic Data Involved: financial/billing information
Keywords: Immediate discovery, video games, internet, third party discovery
Copyright © 2022, K&L Gates LLP. All Rights Reserved.