Privilege or Work Product Protections – Page 2

Boegh v. Harless (W.D. Ky. 2021)

May 13 2021

Key Insight: The pro se plaintiff was ordered to produce social media (Facebook) content relating to the events at issue in the amended complaint. Based on his public Facebook posts, plaintiff commented extensively on the case and identified evidence and witnesses. Plaintiff argued that defendants already had the information from the public posts, but the court found there is a strong indication plaintiff was withholding relevant and discoverable evidence that was private in his account.

Nature of Case: Civil rights – personal injury

Electronic Data Involved: Social media

Case Summary

Healthedge Software, Inc. v. Sharp Health Plan (D. Mass. 2021)

Key Insight:

Defendant filed a Motion to Compel Plaintiff to produce documents, including source code, and Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel Defendant to disclose how it collected and searched its electronically stored information (ESI). The Court granted Plaintiff’s Motion while partially granting Defendant’s Motion.

A significant issue in both Motions was the respective parties’ collection of ESI. The Court noted that the parties failed “to engage in cooperative planning regarding ESI”, and directed the parties to confer regarding custodians and search terms of ESI collection and review. In partially granting Defendant’s Motion, the Court directed Plaintiff to further articulate its objections, but stated that some of Defendant’s discovery requests were premature even if Plaintiff was obligated to respond to them by the close of discovery.

Nature of Case: Breach of Contract

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic Documents, Source Code

Case Summary

Lukis v. Whitepages Incorporated (N.D. Ill.)

Apr 23 2021

Key Insight: Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel and to Extend Fact Discovery Deadline after Defendant refused to substantively respond to Plaintiff’s discovery requests. Similarly, Defendant also had filed Motion to Compel Plaintiff to respond to its discovery requests regarding online account information, social media and browser history. The Court granted Plaintiff’s Motion(s) and partially granted Defendant’s Motion to Compel. The fact discovery deadline in the matter was extended to approximately two months after the Court’s order(s).

Nature of Case: Class Action Lawsuit

Electronic Data Involved: Social Media, Online Account History, Privacy Settings on Websites, Internet Browser History

Case Summary

In re Valsartan N-Nitrosodimethylamine, Losartan, & Irbesartan Prod. Liab. Litig. (D.N.J. 2021)

Jan 08 2021

Key Insight: Defendant claimed that information sought by Plaintiff was discoverable. Plaintiff objected on the basis of confidentiality, and the Court struck Defendant’s confidentiality designations. Specifically, the Court rejected Defendant’s claims that the emails sought contained trade secret and proprietary information, and had the potential to cause it competitive harm. The Court ordered Defendant to use the it’s ruling as an example for dealing with similarly designated documents.

Nature of Case: Diversity, Product Liability

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Case Summary

Milke v. City of Phoenix (D. Ariz. 2020)

Oct 30 2020

Key Insight: The court dismissed plaintiff’s civil rights action based on spoliation of physical and ESI evidence, and for failure to submit complete and accurate discovery responses. The court previously sanctioned plaintiff for spoliation of evidence and determined that lesser sanctions short of dismissal could not cure the prejudice to defendant. Plaintiff, her agents, and her counsel failed to preserve website and social media sites and took affirmative steps on multiple occasions to destroy the evidence after litigation became reasonably foreseeable.

Nature of Case: Civil Rights Act

Electronic Data Involved: Social media and websites

Case Summary

Oracle USA, Inc. v. Rimini Street, Inc. et al. (D. Nev. 2020)

Sep 25 2020

Key Insight: Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel based on Defendant’s (categorical) objections and assertion of attorney-client privilege over (software) source code in responding to discovery requests; Plaintiff specifically cited Defendant’s failure to provide an itemized privilege log for its objections. Defendant filed a Motion to seal the redacted information that it provided to Plaintiff despite the privilege objections.

The Court upheld Defendant’s objections, noting that objection(s) need not be in the form of a privilege log. Moreover, the Court granted the Defendant’s Motion to Seal the redacted information that it provided to Plaintiff despite its objections.

Nature of Case: Intellectual Property, Copyright Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Source Code

Case Summary

Oppenheimer v. Episcopal Communicators, Inc. (W.D. N.C. 2020)

Aug 14 2020

Key Insight: The litigation was over Defendant’s purported copyright infringement due to Defendant’s publishing of a copyrighted photograph on its website. Defendant served its first discovery requests on Plaintiff; Plaintiff provided an untimely response with a number of objections including attorney-client privilege (without a privilege log), and “boilerplate objections”. Defendant filed a Motion to Compel, which was granted. Plaintiff provided a supplemental response, however, Defendant filed an additional Motion to Compel, and also sought attorney’s fees for the Motion. Besides privilege, at issue was Plaintiff’s objection to the proportionality of Defendant’s discovery requests.

The Court did not find Plaintiff’s “boilerplate objections”, including proportionality, persuasive. And found that they lack specificity and/or merit. Plaintiff’s objection(s) of confidentiality on the grounds of settlement, proprietary business information was rejected. Similarly, the Court rejected the Plaintiff’s privilege objection(s) due to Plaintiff’s failure to provide a privilege log.

In summary, the Court found that Plaintiff’s assertion of boilerplate objections (and failure to provide a privilege log) consisted of grounds overruling all of his objections. The Court granted Defendant’s Motion to Compel, and similarly, ordered Defendant to provide it an estimate of the attorney’s fees spent on the Motion (for the purpose of awarding Defendant attorney’s fees).

Nature of Case: Intellectual Property, Copyright Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Digital Photograph

Case Summary

EEOC v. George Washington Univ. (D.D.C. June 26, 2020)

Jun 26 2020

Key Insight: Under FRE 502(d), inadvertent disclosures do not result in a waiver of privilege. While this rule can be utilized to reduce costs of pre-production privilege review, a party cannot be forced to engage in a discovery process that would likely result in the production of privileged documents.

Nature of Case: Employment Discrimination, Equal Pay, Title VII

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Case Summary

US EEOC v The George Washington University (D.D.C. 2020)

Jun 26 2020

Key Insight: Defendant was ordered to produce non-privileged emails responsive to RFP’s. Linear reivew proposed by Defendant wasn’t necessary and other paths existed. Concerns that potential production of privileged information was not enough to justify withholding. Defendant claimed a document by document review was needed, but court believed claw back provisions would be sufficient.

Nature of Case: employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Keywords: review process, 502, privilege

View Case Opinion

In re Aenergy, S.A. (S.D.N.Y. 2020)

Apr 03 2020

Key Insight: The primary purpose of an email must be to secure legal advice to be privileged. It is not enough to copy counsel on the email. If requests in the email are directed to non-legal employees and counsel does not weigh in, it cannot be said that the primary purpose is to seek legal advice. When it is unclear whether a document is providing legal advice or is driven by business or negotiation considerations, attorney-client privilege will not be extended to the document.

Categorical privilege logs must provide sufficient information to evaluate the privilege claim. The party’s vague and repetitive privilege log along with its attempts to claw-back unprivileged documents led to a loss of credibility with the court. The court ordered a re-review of its privilege determination with a revised document-by-document privileged log.

Nature of Case: Fraud, Contract Dispute

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Case Summary

Tag:Privilege or Work Product Protections