Motion to Compel – Page 82 – Electronic Discovery Law

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

Piccone v. Town of Webster, 2010 WL 3516581 (W.D.N.Y. Sept. 3, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff?s motion for spoliation sanctions where plaintiff failed to establish the existence of a duty to preserve at the time of defendants? destruction of ESI; court denied defendants? motion for spoliation sanctions where defendants failed to establish the relevance of the emails at issue or any prejudice resulting from plaintiff?s failure to produce certain emails, particularly where defendant possessed its own copies; court denied defendants? motion to compel inspection of plaintiff?s computer but acknowledged their right to explore plaintiff?s preservation practices at deposition and ordered plaintiff to make a mirror image of her hard drive to be left in the custody of her attorney to assure preservation of ESI

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Emails, hard drive

Living Scriptures, Inc. v. Doe(s), 2010 WL 4687679 (D. Utah. Nov. 10, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court granted motion for expedited discovery to discover the identity of the alleged copyright infringers for the purposes of commencing litigation and for seeking a preliminary injunction noting that courts have ?routinely? allowed such discovery and that the information sought was ?transitory in nature? and necessary to initiate the action

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Does’ identities

Secure Energy, Inc. v. Coal Synthetics, 2010 WL 597388 (E.D. Mo. Feb. 17, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiffs? motion to compel re-production of ESI in native format because the motion was untimely filed but went on to find that defendants? production of ESI in .PDF format was reasonable absent plaintiffs? request for production in native format and that compelling re-production would prejudice defendants where the metadata produced would likely necessitate additional expert involvement and discovery resulting in an adjustment to the case management schedule

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

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

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

Tag:Motion to Compel