Motion to Compel – Page 49 – Electronic Discovery Law

In re Uehling, No. 1:14-mc-00009-LJO-BAM, 2014 WL 1577459 (E.D. Cal. Apr. 17, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court denied defendant’s motion to compel nonparty to answer deposition questions and produce documents, finding that nonparty’s burden of producing copy of external hard drive containing 9.47 gigabytes of information was substantial as the material would need to be reviewed for privilege and for potential redaction and withholding based on confidentiality, privacy and proprietary information purposes, the benefit of the documents to defendant was “minimal,” and defendant had an alternative source for the information sought (i.e., the plaintiff)

Nature of Case: Insurance coverage dispute

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drive that non-party witness provided to DOJ in the course of the DOJ’s investigation of plaintiff

A & R Body Specialty & Collision Works, Inc. v. Progressive Cas. Ins. Co., No. 3:07CV929 (WWE), 2014 WL 4437684 (D. Conn. Sep. 9, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Magistrate judge denied as moot defendants’ request for plaintiffs’ consent to release emails stored with third party vendors Earthlink and AT&T in light of vendors? representations that, when an Earthlink.net or ATT.net user deletes an email from Outlook, the email simultaneously is deleted from the vendor’s server and cannot be recovered; magistrate judge also denied plaintiffs’ request for defendants to produce a merged data set, where one data set had 157 columns and was extracted from third-party provider?s system, and second set had more information but used different field identifiers, since a party cannot be compelled to create a document for its production and the creation of requested data compilation would inherently require the creation of a ?document,? and producing party is not required to produce ESI in more than one form

Nature of Case: Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act claims

Electronic Data Involved: Email, data

M Seven Sys. Ltd. v. Leap Wireless Int?l, Inc., No. 12cv01424 CAB (RBB), 2014 WL 3942200 (S.D. Cal. Aug. 11, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff’s motion for an order to show cause why the defendants should not be held in contempt for failing to all historical versions of source code for each cell phone model at issue, finding that magistrate judge’s discovery order did not preclude more than one reasonable interpretation of its scope, that defendants reasonably interpreted and substantially complied with the order by producing every version of the source code that they possessed

Nature of Case: Plaintiff alleged misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement, violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, violation of California Penal Code ? 502, unfair competition, civil conspiracy to misappropriate trade secrets, and civil conspiracy to unfairly compete

Electronic Data Involved: Various versions of source code

Johnson v. Allstate Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., No. C 14-5064, 2014 WL 7377198 (W.D. Wash. Dec. 29, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Addressing Defendant?s claims that the emails of thirty-four employees previously identified by Defendant as potentially having responsive information were not reasonably accessible, the court indicated that Defendant?s declaration in support of that claim was ?of limited value? where it made only broad claims regarding the potential time it could take to search each computer but failed to account for the actual time taken to search the computers of the four primary adjusters for a prior production but acknowledged it was ?extremely difficult? to conclude that all thirty-four employees had ?significant, relevant discoverable emails or documents? and thus ordered the search and production of one custodian revealed in deposition to have been involved in the at-issue denial of coverage and that Plaintiff could choose 10 additional employees? computers to be searched based on Defendant?s court-ordered description of each employees? job and the type of documents they were likely to maintain

Nature of Case: Insurance litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Robinson v. County of San Joaquin, No. 2:12-cv-2783 MCE GGH PS, 2014 WL 3845775 (E.D. Cal. July 31, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: A clearly exasperated court described the parties’ discovery efforts to date, highlighted the inconsistencies/incompleteness in response, “as well as the complete cacophony of the San Joaquin County e-mail systems and retrieval,” and issued one final, specific order to be followed by defendant lest serious sanctions issue; among other things, court ordered defendant to perform computer-by-computer search for all current employees in order that any emails relating to plaintiff’s discrimination claims or job performance from 2007 to present may be produced, acknowledging that substantial work would be required for compliance but that judge was “not responsible for the County’s email systems which apparently have been designed for individual control and with no concern for litigation responsibilities”

Skepkek v. Roper & Twardowsky, LLC, No. 11-4102-KHV, 2014 WL 289470 (D. Kan. Jan. 27, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Noting that discovery dispute was good example of one which could have been avoided had the parties adequately conferred at their Rule 26(f) conference regarding production of ESI, court found that defendants failed to comply with prior discovery order by failing to produce attachments to responsive emails and granted motion to compel production of attachments

Nature of Case: Contract dispute concerning attorney fee-sharing agreement

Electronic Data Involved: Attachments to e-mails

Audio Visual Innovations, Inc. v. Burgdolf, No. 13-10372, 2014 WL 505565 (E. D. Mich. Feb. 3, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Forensic examination of defendants’ electronic devices was appropriate given nature of case and allegations against individual defendants; court identified particular devices to be examined and provided specific guidelines for the examination and review of ESI, but denied plaintiff’s request for attorneys’ fees since defendants’ objections were reasonable; court further ruled that costs associated with obtaining the information from the devices would be borne by plaintiff

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets

Electronic Data Involved: ESI on defendant’s electronic devices

McNabb v. City of Overland Park, No. 12-CV-2331 CM/TJJ, 2014 WL 1493124 (D. Kan. Apr. 16, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court denied motion to compel defendant to produce additional 10,189 responsive emails where plaintiff did not identify any specific discovery request for which she sought to compel production, or any specific objection thereto that she claimed to be invalid, and defendant had already produced five categories of emails totaling over 36,000 documents; court advised that plaintiff must present something more than mere speculation that search of 14 custodians’ email files using 35 proposed search terms was likely to reveal additional responsive emails, and further noted that, on its face, search term list was overly broad and likely to capture many emails having nothing to do with issues in case

Nature of Case: Sexual discrimination, harassment, hostile work environment and retaliation claims

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Lemon Juice v. Twitter, Inc., No. 502898/14, 2014 WL 4287049 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Aug. 29, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where unknown person created Twitter account in plaintiff?s name and in violation of criminal court’s order took photo of child victim in court testifying against her tormentor and posted it to Twitter account, court ruled that plaintiff had met his burden of demonstrating a meritorious claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress and that the discovery sought from Twitter was needed in order to identify who should be named as a defendant, and that anonymous Twitter account creator?s behavior constituted an actionable tort and was not speech covered by First Amendment protection such that anonymity of creator had to yield to plaintiff?s need to redress the actionable wrong perpetrated against him; court directed Twitter to disclose basic subscriber information, records, internet protocol addresses and other similar information sufficient to identify owner of the bogus Twitter account and to preserve certain evidence

Nature of Case: Special proceeding pursuant to CPLR 3102(c) seeking an order directing Twitter to preserve certain evidence and to disclose certain information

Electronic Data Involved: Twitter subscriber information sufficient to identify the individual(s) who owned or operated particular Twitter account and logged into or “tweeted” on the account

Helget v. City of Hays, No. 13-2228-KHV-KGG, 2014 WL 1308893 (D. Kan. Mar. 31, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where defendant put ESI at issue by stating that plaintiff was fired, in part, for improper, personal use of the city’s computers, ESI relating to computer usage by plaintiff and certain others was relevant and city should have placed litigation hold on plaintiff’s immediate coworkers, those holding similar positions within the city, and the identified “key players”; court ordered city to bear the cost of forensic restoration

Nature of Case: Wrongful termination

Electronic Data Involved: E-mail, internet usage logs, and other ESI

Tag:Motion to Compel