Privilege or Work Product Protections – Page 13

Apparent, Inc. v. Ai-Daiwa, Ltd., No. C 13-04156 VC (LB), 2014 WL 3738348 (N.D. Cal. July 28, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where defendant raised seven problems with plaintiff’s ESI production and sought an order compelling plaintiff to hire a qualified e-discovery vendor, court denied the request because plaintiff was addressing the problems and the circumstances of the case did not support “the potentially expensive outcome of a private vendor” given the short relevant time period and limited universe of documents; court further remarked: ?That being said, generally documents should be produced electronically (not in hard copy), and native file production (or at least processed ESI that contains relevant metadata) is better than paper production.?

Nature of Case: Breach of contract, product defect

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

In re Transpacific Passenger Air Transp. Antitrust Litig., No. C-07-05634 CRB (DMR), 2014 WL 709555 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 24, 2014

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court granted plaintiffs’ motion to quash defendant airline’s subpoena to third party Airline Tariff Publication Company (“ATPCO”) which sought production of documents and ESI previously obtained by plaintiffs from ATPCO, search terms and parameters used by plaintiffs, and communications between ATPCO and plaintiffs’ expert, where defendant had chose not to collaborate with plaintiffs and other defendants to identify relevant information, formulate search strings and download the results pursuant to a cost-sharing agreement, and parties’ stipulation regarding experts protected the requested materials from discovery

Nature of Case: Antitrust litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Historical airfare pricing data

Commonwealth v. Gelfgatt, 11 N.E.3d 605 (Mass. 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where the facts that would be conveyed by a criminal defendant through his act of decryption of computer files — i.e., his ownership and control of the computers and their contents, knowledge of the act of encryption, and knowledge of the encryption key — are already known to the government and are thus a “foregone conclusion,” compelling the defendant to enter his encryption key does not violate the defendant’s rights under the Fifth Amendment because the defendant is only telling the government what it already knows; accordingly, court reversed trial judge’s denial of government’s motion to compel decryption and remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings

Nature of Case: Criminal case regarding mortgage fraud scheme

Electronic Data Involved: ESI; encryption key

Cormack v. United States, No. 13-232C, 2014 WL 3555255 (Fed. Cl. July 18, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court found no waiver resulting from the production of a privileged email (work product) in light of the scope of discovery (more than one million pages produced), defendant?s use of ?advanced software to screen for privilege,? and the ?numerous steps? intended to protect privilege as outlined for the court and because counsel sought the email?s return ?within hours? of receiving a filing with the email attached; defendant was also found to be in control of documents in the possession of a ?wholly owned but indirect French subsidiary? in light of the companies? collaboration on the at-issue software as illustrated by the companies? representations to the potential client regarding their collaboration, agreements between the companies, and the close working relationship between the two

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email, documents in possession of non-party

Vicente v. City of Prescott, No. CV-11-08204-PCT-DGC, 2014 WL 3939277 (D. Ariz. Aug. 13, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where city notified key personnel to preserve relevant evidence but never instructed its IT department to suspend automatic procedure for eliminating deleted emails after 30 days or to assist key individuals in collecting and preserving relevant emails, city?s preservation efforts were “clearly deficient? but no sanctions were warranted as plaintiffs identified only one email that ultimately was lost as a result of defendants? inadequate preservation actions; court further granted plaintiffs? motion to compel production of unredacted versions of two litigation hold letters sent by the city to employees, and ruled on various other dispositive and discovery motions

Nature of Case: First Amendment, retaliation, defamation and related state law claims

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Galena St. Fund, LP v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., No. 12-cv-00587-BNB-KMT, 2014 WL 943115 (D. Colo. Mar. 10, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Applying FRE 502, court rejected plaintiff?s argument that defendant waived attorney-client privilege by producing 150 privileged documents among production totaling some 208,000 documents consisting of over 2.2 million pages, as defendant established an elaborate protocol for review and production of documents and took reasonable steps to prevent disclosure of privileged documents, demonstrated that the production was inadvertent, and took reasonable steps to rectify the error with reasonable promptness

First Senior Fin. Group LLC v. ?Watchdog,? No. 12-cv-1247, 2014 WL 1327584 (E.D. Pa. Apr. 3, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court applied four-part test to determine that defendant acted intentionally and in bad faith to suppress or withhold relevant evidence, but because the prejudice to plaintiffs resulting from the spoliation appeared minimal and plaintiffs did not present any arguments as to how the spoliation prejudiced the ultimate merits of their case, court would only require defendant to pay the cost of the independent computer forensics expert and attorneys’ fees associated with plaintiffs’ motion for spoliation sanctions; court denied all other relief and sanctions sought by plaintiffs

Nature of Case: Defamation, tortious interference with business relationships, civil conspiracy, violations of the Lanham Act

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, computer hard drive

PersonalWeb Techs., LLC v. Google Inc., No. C13-01317 EJD (HRL), 2014 WL 4088201 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 19, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Among other rulings on the parties? respective discovery motions, the court: (1) denied plaintiff?s request for an order compelling defendants to produce document retention policies and litigation hold notices issued in the case, because litigation hold notice was protected as attorney-client communication and/or work product and burden of producing requested material, however minimal, outweighed its likely benefit; court noted that plaintiff waited over one year to follow up on particular request, relevance of material to case merits was dubious, and timing of motion following court?s finding that plaintiff had committed spoliation by failing to timely file its litigation hold suggested that plaintiff?s motivation was retaliatory; and (2) denying plaintiff?s request for source code and documents related to newest version of accused product, which version was still in development, since discovery into such material would be premature because an incomplete, non-?live? product cannot be evaluated for infringement in patent litigation

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, litigation hold notice, source code

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”

Lawrence v. Dependable Med. Transp. Servs., LLC, No. 2:13-cv-0417-HRH, 2014 WL 2510623 (D. Ariz. June 4, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where plaintiffs supported their motion for partial summary judgment with plainly privileged e-mails between defendants and their attorneys, which defendants had inadvertently produced, court granted defendants’ motion to strike and ruled that, because plaintiffs had failed to comply with FRCP 26(b)(5)(B), they would not be allowed to use the e-mails for any purpose

Nature of Case: Fair Labor Standards Act claims

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged e-mails

Tag:Privilege or Work Product Protections