Key Insight: Preliminary injunction ordered former employee to return customer information to plaintiff and to make available all personal computing devices in his home for inspection and review by an expert hired by plaintiff at plaintiff’s expense
Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract
Electronic Data Involved: Spreadsheets and home computing devices
Key Insight: Court entered preliminary injunction enjoining former employee from violating his confidentiality agreement and ordering him to preserve “all information currently stored on his personal computers, personal digital assistant, mobile telephone, including any information stored on backup media for a period of 180 days”; order also required employee’s new employer to preserve all information currently stored on its computers relating in any way to its recruitment and employment of the defendant, or its ice cream sandwich wafer operations, during the pendency of the litigation
Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets and related claims
Electronic Data Involved: Computer files containing sensitive product information
Key Insight: Where plaintiff presented convincing evidence at preliminary injunction hearing of defendant’s intentional spoliation of evidence, including his installation of file ?shredder? program on laptop computer the day before litigation was filed and under threat of its commencement, court allowed inference that that considerably more evidence of misconduct would have been found without the spoliation and granted preliminary injunction barring defendant from, among other things, destroying or deleting relevant ESI
Nature of Case: Breach of employment agreement
Electronic Data Involved: Laptop computer
Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff’s motion for accelerated discovery and immediate inspection and copying of defendants’ computers by computer forensic specialist designated by plaintiff, since plaintiff had not yet filed its preliminary injunction motion: ?The Court will not accelerate and expand discovery beyond the parameters annunciated in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure so as to help the parties prepare for an evidentiary hearing that may never take place.?
Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets and related claims
Electronic Data Involved: Email, confidential business information
Key Insight: Even lacking direct evidence that defendants continued to possess plaintiff?s computer disks and information (which had been seized by the Attorney General in related criminal investigation), trial court erred in denying preliminary injunction given evidence of defendants? knowing and willing participation in criminal, unethical and unscrupulous acts against plaintiff and possibility that information could have been downloaded to other computers, or printed, or handwritten and kept anywhere; trial court’s credibility determination in favor of defendants was abuse of discretion under the circumstances
Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets and related claims
Electronic Data Involved: CDs and computer disks
Key Insight: Court set hearing date for plaintiff’s motion for expedited discovery and granted in part and denied in part defendants’ motion for expedited discovery; plaintiff agreed to allow defense counsel access to laptop computer that individual defendant possessed while in the employ of plaintiff, for the purpose of making a mirror image of the hard drive for examination by a computer forensics expert hired by defendant; court allowed defense counsel 14 days after the hard drive was “mirrored” to conduct expedited discovery subject to confidentiality order agreed to by parties
Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets, violation of non-compete
Electronic Data Involved: Laptop computer
Key Insight: Where court’s TRO (1) prohibited defendants from destroying relevant documents, materials, information or other property, including electronically stored information and (2) required defendants to immediately return any property of plaintiff in defendants’ possession, custody or control, including electronically stored information, court denied request to convert TRO into preliminary injunction as to (1) because no evidence was presented at the hearing suggesting that defendants had engaged in such unlawful destructive behavior in the past or that they would do so in the future, and as to (2) because defendants had already complied with the TRO requiring such action; court entered preliminary injunction as to other matters
Nature of Case: Breach of employment agreement
Electronic Data Involved: Email and electronic documents
Key Insight: Court granted plaintiff’s motion for expedited, limited discovery relating to the fate of five emails containing proprietary and trade secret information, which were sent by defendant from his business email account to his personal email account before his termination; plaintiff allowed limited access to defendant’s personal email account and hard drive, and would be allowed to depose defendant regarding actions taken with respect to subject emails and attachments
Nature of Case: Breach of employment agreement, misappropriation of trade secrets and related claims
Electronic Data Involved: Emails and attachments, personal computer hard drive
Key Insight: District court affirmed bankruptcy court’s orders appointing a receiver to monitor debtor’s operations in order to preserve debtor’s assets, and restraining debtor from destroying any records or computer files, where trustee showed that, among other discovery abuses, the debtor’s business data contained on hard drives had been destroyed
Nature of Case: Appeal from bankruptcy court ruling
Electronic Data Involved: Business data on hard drives
Key Insight: Court’s preliminary injunction included the following provision: “Pending resolution of this litigation, the Defendants shall not destroy, delete, or alter electronically stored file information.”
Nature of Case: Plaintiff claimed damage to its goodwill and business reputation based upon Internet postings regarding a particular vehicle
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
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