Archive - December 15, 2004

Northern Crossarm Co., Inc. v. Chem. Specialties, Inc., 2004 WL 635606 (W.D. Wis. Mar. 3, 2004)

Defendant produced its email in hardcopy form, amounting to about 65,000 pages, and plaintiff moved to compel defendant to produce the email in electronic form. The court denied the motion, stating: Read More

Super Film of America, Inc. v. UCB Films, Inc., 219 F.R.D. 649 (D.Kan. 2004)

Defendant sought discovery of electronic versions of e-mail, documents, databases and spreadsheets falling within the scope of Fed.R.Civ.P. 26 or defendant’s document requests. Plaintiff had made available to SFA non-archived electronic versions of e-mail, documents and spreadsheets, and stated that it had attempted to provide electronic copies of the documents requested within its “knowledge or expertise” of how to retrieve such documents from the company’s two computers. It argued that it did not have the expertise to recover any further electronic documents, and the court’s order requiring such production would be unduly burdensome. Read More

In re Lorazepam & Chlorazepate Antitrust Litig., 300 F.Supp.2d 43 (D.D.C. 2004)

Plaintiffs are Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota and of Massachusetts, the Federated Mutual Insurance Company, and the Health Care Service Corporation (“the Blues”). They opted out of a settlement premised on antitrust violations by the defendant, Mylan Laboratories (“Mylan”). Read More

In re LTV Steel Co., Inc., 307 B.R. 37 (N.D. Ohio 2004)

In bankruptcy proceeding, a creditor (“C&K”) submitted a claim for $1.9 million against the estate, a portion of which the debtor agreed was due. When the debtor sought discovery from the creditor relating to the disputed portion of the claim, C&K objected, offering new and different grounds as the debtor attempted to respond to the stated objections. Read More

Thompson v. United States Dep’t of Hous. & Urban Dev., 219 F.R.D. 93 (D.Md. 2003)

Plaintiff filed a motion in limine to bar the defendant from calling certain witnesses based upon the defendant’s failure to produce 80,000 responsive email records until long after the discovery cut-off deadline. After making its initial rulings, and having observed that the issues presented had not yet been addressed in a published opinion in the District of Maryland, the court issued this opinion in order to provide a fuller explanation for its rulings. Read More

Bethea v. Comcast, 218 F.R.D. 328 (D.D.C. 2003)

Plaintiff in an employment discrimination suit moved for an order compelling defendants to allow her to enter upon their premises, inspect their computer systems and related programs, and copy any information relevant to her claims. Plaintiff was dissatisfied with the results of the discovery process and suspected that defendants possessed more information than they had produced. Read More

In re Honeywell Int’l, Inc. Sec. Litig., 230 F.R.D. 293 (S.D.N.Y. 2003)

Class plaintiffs served a third party subpoena on defendant’s accountant, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (“PWC”), and PWC produced approximately 63,500 pages of documents. Plaintiffs moved to compel production of certain categories of documents withheld by PWC from that production, while PWC cross- moves to quash the subpoena. Read More

Wiginton v. Ellis, 2003 WL 22439865 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 27, 2003)

Plaintiff sued for sexual harassment as a putative class representative. During the course of discovery, the parties agreed on a preservation order; however, prior to that time, the defendant had continued its normal document retention and destruction policies, had not informed its director of network services that any material should be retained, and never informed its employees about the need to retain documents relevant to the lawsuit (although it had issued a notice to employees to save documents specifically related to the plaintiff, which the court found too narrow in scope). Backup tapes were recycled and former employees’ hard drives were not saved, including that of the plaintiff’s former supervisor. Read More

Kucala Enter., Ltd. V. Auto Wax Co., Inc., 2003 WL 21230605 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 27, 2003)

Ruling on plaintiff’s objections to the report and recommendations of the magistrate, the court declined to enter the ultimate sanction of default. The court adopted the factual findings of the magistrate, and adopted his recommendations with the one exception that the court would allow the plaintiff to proceed on its claim of non-infringement and to defend the infringement counterclaim, “on the condition that all discovery be made forthwith.” 2003 WL 22433095, at *7.

Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212 (S.D.N.Y. 2003) (“Zubulake IV”)

During the restoration effort described in the court’s prior opinions, the parties discovered that certain backup tapes were missing. It also became clear that certain isolated, relevant emails created after Zubulake’s initial EEOC charge had been deleted from UBS’s system, and existed only on backup tapes. Read More