Motion to Compel – Page 59 – Electronic Discovery Law

Momentive Specialty Chems., Inc. v. Alexander, No. 2:13-cv-275, 2013 WL 2151477 (S.D. Ohio May 16, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Where plaintiff sought to discover whether flash drives containing its sensitive information had been accessed by defendant since he started working for his new employer and also sought production of all relevant information contained on defendant?s laptop, the court indicated that Plaintiff?s expert would be allowed to image and search defendant?s laptop to determine if the flash drives had been accessed and to produce to Plaintiff any ?actual files? from those drives determined to be on defendant?s computer without first allowing defendant to conduct a review for relevance or privilege; as to other relevant documents found on the laptop which were not taken from the at-issue flash drives, the court ordered that any keyword hits be provided to defendant to review before production; to assuage concerns that relevant information would be withheld, court ordered defendant to prepare a log of any documents withheld on relevance grounds to allow the parties to have ?reasoned discussions? regarding those withholdings

Nature of Case: Breach of non-compete agreement, misappropriation of proprietary information

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Ewald v. Royal Norwegian Embassy, No. 11-CV-2116 SRN/SER, 2013 WL 6094600 (D. Minn. Nov. 20, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: District court affirmed in part magistrate judge?s order (at 2013 WL 5687559) denying plaintiff?s request for forensic examination of laptop computers used by plaintiff during her employment, as defendant produced 56,625 pages of documents from most recently used laptop, and burden and expense of forensic examination of previous laptop outweighed its likely benefit, given that plaintiff did not assert even a belief that relevant information existed on that computer that was not produced from other sources; court reversed in part magistrate judge?s order denying access to text and voice messages, finding that plaintiff demonstrated that ?the scale tips in her favor? in regard to two mobile phones provided by defendant to plaintiff and another witness for work-related purposes, and ordering parties to meet and confer upon protocol to be used in conducting search for responsive text messages and voice messages contained on the two devices

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Work laptops, and text messages and voice messages on certain mobile devices

Fed. Deposit Ins. Co. v. Brudnicki, No. 5:12-cv-00398-RS-GRJ, 2013 WL 2948098 (N.D. Fla. June 14, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Where discovery would be asymmetrical and Plaintiff would be producing the majority of documents in the case, court approved a protocol that would require the parties to cooperate to develop search terms to identify potentially relevant documents to be uploaded to a database for Defendant?s review for the purpose of identifying documents to be produced and which would require Defendant to pay $.06 per page produced and $225 monthly for each gigabyte uploaded into the database; court held cost-shifting was appropriate where Plaintiff had already identified and collected the potentially responsive information at great expense and compared the $.06 charge to photocopying costs in traditional discovery and also cited and considered the factors of Rule 26(b)(2)(C), which provide authority for cost shifting and ?strongly supported? the Plaintiff?s proposed ESI protocol

Nature of Case: Action against Bank’s former directors for negligence and gross negligence related to approval of 11 transactions

Electronic Data Involved: ESI in FDIC database

Skepnek v. Roper & Twardowsky, No. 11-41-2-KHV, 2013 WL 5499801 (D. Kan. Oct. 3, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Where defendant sought to avoid running the searches proposed by plaintiff based on irrelevance, overbreadth and undue burden, the court found that defendant had failed to meet the burden to show cause for entry of a protective order and granted plaintiffs? motion to compel

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Watson Carpet & Floor Covering, Inc. v. Mohawk Ind., Inc., No. 3:09-0487, 2013 WL 5306444 (M.D. Tenn. Sep. 20, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Reasoning that a request for production cannot require a responding party to create documents that are not already in existence, court denied plaintiff’s motion to compel production of comparison sales reports for other U.S. sales districts where there was no dispute that the additional documents requested did not exist and would need to be created by extracting historical data from archive and backup data storage maintained by defendant

Nature of Case: Antitrust claims

Electronic Data Involved: Sales data

Ameranth v. Pizza Hut, Inc., 2013 WL 636936 (S.D. Cal. Feb. 20, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Court declined to compel production of ?the entire source code tree for each accused product? where it found that Plaintiff had not shown the need to fully understand all operations as opposed to ?only those aspects accused in the infringement claims? and where the alleged burden of production was great; court ordered that production of relevant portions of source code must include original files names and be in native format

Nature of Case: Patent Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Source Code

In re Denture Care Prods. Liab. Litig., 292 F.R.D. 120 (D.D.C. 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Court found information sought in third party subpoena was relevant, that production of documents with missing pages or emails without their attachments did not comply with Rule 45, that subpoena was not unduly burdensome, and that forensic investigation of third party?s computers was not yet warranted in spite of ?discrepancies and inconsistencies? in their production, but warned that third party could be required to bear the cost of forensic investigation of their computers if they failed to comply with court?s order to produce all responsive documents

Nature of Case: Products Liability

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Westdale Recap Props., Ltd. v. NP/I & G Wakefield Commons, LLC, No. 5:11-CV-659-D, 2013 WL 5424844 (E.D.N.C. Sep. 26, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Where producing party defended tardiness of production by explaining it had been awaiting agreement on protocol for ESI, as contemplated in parties? discovery plan, and proposed search terms from plaintiffs to conduct a supplemental search of ESI pursuant to such protocol, court granted in part and denied in part plaintiffs? motion to compel, setting deadlines for plaintiffs to provide different custodians, dates and/or keyword search terms, and for production, resolving that production should be in the form of searchable PDF?s with the option of requesting particular ESI in native format if there is a demonstrable need, and requiring defendant to prepare privilege log meeting requirements of Rule 26(b)(5)(A) and duly signed by counsel for any otherwise responsive documents withheld on grounds of privilege

Nature of Case: Fraud, civil conspiracy, unfair and deceptive trade practices and negligent misrepresentation

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Digital Reg of Texas, LLC v. Adobe Sys. Inc., No. 12-01971-CW-(KAW), 2013 WL 633406 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 20, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: ?In light of the availability of source code analyzer tools and the extraordinary burden that a compiler would impose on [Defendant], the court denie[d] [Plaintiff?s] request for a compiler for source code review?; court also declined to compel defendant?s production of printouts of 14 complete files (of source code) and ordered the parties to meet to determine which limited portions of the source code would be produced in hard copy and to arrange for [Plaintiff?s] experts to inspect the complete file ?to determine the limited portions of the source code needed, if necessary.?

Nature of Case: Patent Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Source code, compiler software

W. Penn. Elec. Employees Pension Fund v. Alter, No. 2:09-cv-04730-CMR, 2013 WL 4803564 (E.D. Pa. June 26, 2013), approved and adopted in substantial part, 2013 WL 4799061 (E.D. Pa. Sep. 6, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: In this Report and Amended Recommended Order, Special Discovery Master agreed with plaintiffs that they should have the opportunity to confirm, though inspection by neutral e-discovery vendor already retained by parties, defense counsel?s representations as to contents of individual defendant?s belatedly-disclosed hard drive, because without the requested examination, there was no way to know if, in fact, hard drive contents were duplicative of data already produced by another party as the individual defendant claimed; Special Master found request was not unreasonable given the centrality of the defendant in events giving rise to the lawsuit, the unsubstantiated nature of defense counsel?s claim that the data was duplicative, that the defendant had provided only limited discovery to plaintiffs, that the defendant, through his counsel, had previously denied possession of any responsive data when the hard drive had been in his home and responsive documents were on his personal computer, much time and money had been expended in the effort to obtain the documents from other sources, and plaintiffs should not be expected to accept without question the claim that the defendant ?simply forgot? he had received company documents prior to his departure; district court subsequently adopted recommendation but modified deadlines and division of costs

Nature of Case: Securities class action

Electronic Data Involved: Material on hard drive belatedly disclosed by individual defendant

Tag:Motion to Compel