Proportionality – Page 3 – Electronic Discovery Law

Hastings v. Ford Motor Co. (S.D. Cal. 2021)

Apr 02 2021

Key Insight: In litigation over product defect claim(s), Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel Defendants to produce additional records pursuant to its discovery requests. The Motion centered around search terms that Plaintiff sought to compel Defendants to utilize in searching for responsive records. Reviewing specific Requests for Production, the Court found that they were overbroad and lacked relevance. Plaintiff’s Motion was denied, and Plaintiff was ordered to show why it (and counsel) should not have to reimburse Defendants’ for attorney’s fees and expenses in responding to the Motion.

Nature of Case: Contract Product Liability

Electronic Data Involved: Search Terms

Case Summary

Measured Wealth Private Client, Grp., LLC v. Foster (S.D. Fla., Mar. 2021)

Key Insight: Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel Forensic Examination to permit inspection of the Defendant’s cellular phone. Specifically, the Plaintiff sought iMessages and text messages for a 12-month period. The Defendant asserted that the temporal scope of the messages sought was too broad, the messages could be obtained from other sources, and the examination of the phone for such a long time period was a “mere fishing expedition”.

The Court directed that the forensic examination proceed with an agreed upon independent expert to examine a forensic image of the phone with the Plaintiff paying for the initial fees and costs for doing so. In such an image was not feasible, then the expert was to acquire as much data as possible from the device to allow for the recovery of the iMessages and text messages. The Court noted that the Defendant had been “obstructionist” in responding to Plaintiff’s initial discovery requests (which sought the above described messages), and expressed concern about the Defendant providing complete production of all requested documents in the litigation.

Nature of Case: Employment

Electronic Data Involved: Text Messages, iMessages, Cellular Phone

Case Summary

Benebone LLC v. Pet Qwerks, Inc. (C.D. Cal. Feb. 18, 2021)

Feb 18 2021

Key Insight: Court granted defendants’ motion to compel plaintiff to produce Slack messages used as part of its internal business communications. Despite the potentially 30,000 Slack messages to review, the court found compelling the testimony from defendants’ forensic expert who stated there are a number of tools and software vendors that have streamlined review and production of Slack messages. Further, searches could be limited to certain Slack channels, users and custodians to very streamline the volume of messages for review. Thus, “requiring review and production of Slack messages by Benebone is generally comparable to requiring search and production of emails and is not unduly burdensome or disproportional to the needs of this case – if the requests and searches are appropriately limited and focused.”

Nature of Case: Intellectual property

Electronic Data Involved: Slack messages

Case Summary

Laub v. Horbaczewski (C.D. Cal. 2020)

Nov 17 2020

Key Insight: Plaintiffs sought Slack messages and defendants claimed they did not have access to the messages because of its level of Slack plan. The court instructed plaintiffs to pursue the Slack messages through a third party subpoena and defendants objected to the overbroad scope of the subpoena. The court concluded plaintiffs “credibly argued” that the Slack messages “may be relevant to the issues involved in this case,” but found that the request was not proportional to the needs of the case under the second prong of Rule 26(b)(1) because: (1) The defendants did not have access to the messages and requiring them to produce the messages would impose an undue burden and expense, and (2) the messages would likely be cumulative because the record was “replete with evidence of Plaintiffs’ involvement” and plaintiffs “offer no evidence that the private messages contain any novel or noteworthy information that warrant compelling their production.”

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Instant messages

Case Summary

In re: 3M Combat Arms Earplug Prods. Liab. Litig. (N.D. Fla., Oct. 2020)

Key Insight: In their discovery requests, Defendants sought data concerning the Plaintiff’s use of social media and text messages concerning matters relevant to the litigation. After Plaintiff provided responses to these discovery requests, Defendants filed a Motion to Compel Plaintiff to submit to a forensic examination of his mobile phone. Defendants based their Motion on the arguments of ensuring complete collection of data from the mobile phone, and more specifically, complete data of Plaintiff’s use of social media messaging and text messaging with several parties on said mobile phone.

The Court denied Defendants’ Motion because it found that the electronic stored information (ESI) already produced was complete and/or sufficient due to the Plaintiff already working with an ESI expert to obtain the requested data, particularly from the mobile device. In short, the Defendants’ lacked a sufficient reason to believe that the data already produced was not complete.

Similarly, the Defendants failed to demonstrate that a forensic examination of the mobile device would produce relevant data showing that Plaintiff had a pattern or practice of deleting the above mentioned messages. Moreover, the data produced by the examination would only show that a message was deleted, not when or why the message(s) were deleted, the contents of the message(s), or a pattern of deleting messages. In sum, the Court found that the requested forensic examination would be “disproportionate to the slight importance” it would provide to the litigation.

Nature of Case: Product Liability

Electronic Data Involved: Cellular Phone, Text Messages, Social Media, Social Media Messages,

Case Summary

Haroun v. ThoughtWorks, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 2020)

Oct 07 2020

Key Insight: Plaintiff has no basis to seek “discovery on discovery” from defendants. Plaintiff “does not identify any gaps in production of ESI, any reason to believe that documents have been deleted, or any basis for asserting that Defendants are not searching all relevant and reasonably available sources of ESI that would contain material responsive to Plaintiff’s document requests.” Plaintiff can inquire at deposition and review the document production to identify obvious gaps.

Nature of Case: Employment Discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Business documents

Case Summary

Murray v. City of Warren (E.D. Mich. 2020)

Aug 17 2020

Key Insight: The court agreed that plaintiff’s request for “all emails” from three custodians was overly broad and narrowed it to relevant search terms relating to plaintiff’s allegations of harassment. The court also relied on its prior ruling, directing the parties to confer regarding the search terms and if the parties cannot agree on appropriately limited search terms, they will share the cost of retaining an expert to assist them. If they still cannot agree, plaintiff can renew his motion and provide the court with an expert report substantiating his position.

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Email, Personnel files

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

Oppenheimer v. Episcopal Communicators (Western District of North Carolina, 2020)

Aug 14 2020

Key Insight: A non-moving party’s objections to discovery need to be more than boilerplate and must be specific

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement (DMCA)

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic documents generally

Keywords: Copyright, DMCA, photographs, Oppenheimer,

View Case Opinion

Maurice v. Allstate Insurance Co. (W.D. Wash. 2020)

Jul 28 2020

Key Insight: Defendant had a Motion to Compel Plaintiff to produce information and documents regarding physical and emotional injuries that she purportedly sustained during the accidents giving rise to litigation.

Among the information sought by Defendant were documents and information regarding the negative impact a motor vehicle accident on her social life, hobbies and activities. This included communications, emails, text messages, photographs, video and Facebook posts. Defendant’s Motion was granted, however, Defendant’s request for attorney’s fees and expenses was denied.

Nature of Case: Insurance Contract

Electronic Data Involved: Emails, Text Messages, Photographs, Video and Facebook Posts

Case Summary

Tag:Proportionality