Motion to Compel – Page 76 – Electronic Discovery Law

Edelen v. Campbell Soup Co., 2010 WL 774186 (N.D. Ga. Mar. 2, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court ordered 4 pages of privileged documents be returned to defendants where the pages were privileged on their face and inadvertently produced (4 pages of privileged material were produced among 2000 pages and the documents were subject to review by three attorneys prior to production) and where counsel immediately sought their return upon discovery of their production; court ordered narrowing of search terms and fewer custodians upon defendants? objection to plaintiffs? proposed scope (including 55 custodians and 50 search terms) where plaintiff failed to respond to the objection within the ten day period provided by the court

Nature of Case: Employment litigation

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, privileged materials

Phillip M. Adams & Assoc., LLC v. Fujitsu Ltd., 2010 WL 1901776 (D. Utah May 10, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Addressing a number of issues related to the format and organization of plaintiff?s production and a motion to compel plaintiff?s response to interrogatories, court ordered the production of ESI in its native format where plaintiff failed to object to a request for the same but, where native production was not specified, plaintiff was allowed to select the form of production; unable to determine whether the burden of production of computer data from all computers used by plaintiff over a period of many years would outweigh the value of production, court ordered plaintiff to produce a detailed inventory of each computer and to allow sampling of one or two computers of defendant?s choice in order to determine the need for additional discovery

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, hard drives

Trusz v. USB Realty Investors LLC, 2010 WL 3583064 (D. Conn. Sept. 7, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where plaintiff accused defendant of a ?document dump? in the wake of its production of 4,004,183 pages of documents and where defendants argued that the high volume was a result of plaintiff?s overbroad discovery requests, the court reasoned that the issue could have been avoided had counsel conferred to refine search terms and ordered the parties to confer in good faith to reach agreement regarding reducing the volume of discovery and that absent agreement, a special master would be appointed

Nature of Case: Claims arising from alleged concealment of overvaluing real estate investments

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

EEOC v. Supervalu, Inc., 2010 WL 5071196 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 7, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff?s motion to compel production of portions of defendants? human resources database where defendants showed that it would take at least a week, perhaps longer, to write the code necessary to pull the requested data and where the information sought required ?significant analysis? and relied on an unproven assumption such that plaintiff did not establish that ?the purported relevance or benefit of the information outweigh[ed] the burden or expense of producing it?

Nature of Case: Violations of ADA

Electronic Data Involved: Portion of Human Resources database

Estate of Eva Boles v. Nat?l Heritage Realty, Inc., 2010 WL 1759026 (N.D. Miss. Apr. 27, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where production of defendants? general ledger was necessary because there was no suitable alternative to provide the information, but where defendants? counsel asserted that such production would require ?hundreds of hours? and involve great expense, court noted defendants failure to produce any details in support of its assertion and that plaintiff was willing to bear the reasonable costs and granted plaintiff?s motion to compel

Electronic Data Involved: General ledger in electronic format

Team Mktg. USA, Corp. v. Energy Brands, Inc., 913 N.Y.S.2d 874 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where plaintiff requested that defendant produce documents ?in the form and in the same order which in each file in which they existed prior to production? and where defendant then produced email in PDF format, the court denied plaintiff?s request to compel reproduction of the emails upon finding that plaintiff?s request did not constitute a request for a particular format and because the documents had already been produced in ?a reasonably usable format?

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

In re Subpoenas, 692 F.Supp.2d 602 (W.D.Va. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where recipient of government subpoenas refused to comply on grounds of unreasonableness and burden, court approved government?s offer to reduce number of custodians from 13 to 3 (out of a workforce of approximately 72,000) and ordered recipient to produce live emails and snapshot of emails from backup tapes for each of the years between 2002 and 2008 which, the court noted, had been preserved for other litigation

Nature of Case: Government investigation

Electronic Data Involved: Email, snapshot of email from backup tapes

N. Am. Rescue Prods., Inc. v. Bound Tree Med., LLC, 2010 WL 1873291 (S.D. Ohio May 10, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Addressing several privilege-related issues upon plaintiff?s objections to the magistrate?s order compelling production, court found inadvertently produced email communications resulted in waiver of attorney-client privilege where plaintiffs failed to take reasonable steps to prevent disclosure and to rectify the error upon discovery of the production, noting specifically that plaintiff was aware of the production for a matter of months before taking action only after defendant?s motion to compel

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets, false advertising, trademark infringement and related claims

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged emails

Smith v. James C. Hormel School of the Va. Inst. of Autism, 2010 WL 3702528 (W.D. Va. Sept. 14, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court declined to find privilege was waived as the result of a significant delay in identifying withheld privileged communications where defendants were aware that the pro se plaintiffs had consulted with counsel but failed to follow up regarding the existence of privileged communications, where defendants were not prejudiced by the delay, and where the court found no evidence of bad faith, but, noting that one plaintiff was a lawyer and should have known of the disclosure requirements, imposed a monetary sanction equal to defendant?s fees and costs for bringing the motion to compel

Nature of Case: Alleged violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged emails

Revello v. Med-Data Infotech USA, Inc., 2010 WL 4967968 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. Dec. 8, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court quashed order directing production of defendant?s source code where, despite claiming misappropriation of its trade secret, plaintiff declined to produce its own source code and thus ?neither identified with reasonable particularity the nature of its claimed trade secret nor established that it exists? and was therefore not entitled to the source code it sought from the defendant

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secret

Electronic Data Involved: Source code

Tag:Motion to Compel