Key Insight: District court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to impose spoliation sanctions against defendant university for deletion of former teaching assistant’s email account, where university backed-up the contents of the account onto two CDs before deleting it, and the deletion occurred before the lawsuit was filed
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination, civil rights
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Court ordered production of a complete copy of defendant’s Sequel database, and any historical backup copies of database spanning relevant time period, since it was highly relevant to parties’ claims and defenses and defendant had not articulated a valid legal basis for resisting its disclosure; court further ordered that the database was to be treated as “Highly Confidential” pursuant to court’s confidentiality order
Nature of Case: Fraud and negligence claims
Electronic Data Involved: Database
Key Insight: Court granted plaintiffs’ motion to compel production of: (1) electronic data used to answer interrogatories, (2) information systems organizational charts, (3) policies and records regarding electronic data, electronic backup, electronic data retention and destruction, finding that the requests could lead to relevant evidence regarding what efforts defendant made to preserve ESI, since plaintiffs alleged that defendant failed to produce ESI with its initial disclosures under FRCP 26(a)(1)
Nature of Case: Breach of contract, unjust enrichment
Electronic Data Involved: ESI used to answer interrogatories; backup and retention policies
Key Insight: District court overruled plaintiff’s objections to magistrate judge’s order denying in part motion to compel since order was not clearly erroneous; although plaintiff argued that more material should have been produced, defendants represented that they had produced everything and magistrate judge noted that both sides’ counsel had access to mirror images of hard drives containing the requested data which had been seized in police investigation
Nature of Case: Allegations of sexual abuse and harrassment by former elementary school teacher
Electronic Data Involved: Email and other ESI
Key Insight: Where defendants failed to produce email, failed to properly preserve email, and had not complied with orders to timely produce discovery, nor paid plaintiffs’ costs of bringing discovery motions as ordered nor paid sanctions to court as directed, and repeatedly failed to follow local rules with respect to timely and properly filing documents, court granted plaintiff’s motion for case dispositive sanctions; trial would be on the issue of damages only, and only plaintiff’s evidence would be admitted given defendants’ failure to file witness or exhibit lists
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Where defendant stated it did not maintain physical copies of statements and that compliance with production request would impermissibly require it to create documents, court found that defendant had not shown requested information was “not reasonably accessible” and ordered production to the extent defendant maintained any of the requested information electronically
Nature of Case: Conversion
Electronic Data Involved: Customer account statements
Key Insight: District Court affirmed Bankruptcy Court’s ruling dismissing trustee’s claim for spoliation of evidence since the trustee failed to establish the fifth element of the claim
Nature of Case: Insurer brought adversary proceeding against Chapter 7 trustee
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Court ruled plaintiff was entitled to monetary sanctions arising from defendant’s document production, stating: “It is undisputed that the first two productions were essentially unusable, and that as a result, plaintiff’s law firm wasted a considerable amount of time attempting to organize the electronic documents. It was the responsibility of defense counsel to ensure that the document production complied with Rule 34(b)(i), and to oversee the work of defendant’s document management company.”
Nature of Case: Construction litigation
Electronic Data Involved: Electronic documents
Key Insight: Court ordered plaintiff to produce certain documents related to forensic examinations of former employee’s computers, including electronic documents or portions thereof retrieved from the computers, and all related “fact” work product since substantial need had been demonstrated; court further ordered plaintiff’s IT employee to answer questions regarding forensic examinations at deposition, finding inadequate plaintiff’s proposal that witness respond to unanswered questions through an errata sheet since LMC’s counsel instructed witness not to testify on broad areas of inquiry and counsel was unable to fully develop lines of questioning
Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets
Electronic Data Involved: Results of forensic computer analysis
Key Insight: Spoliation sanctions were not warranted for defendant’s failure to preserve copies of screenshots that may have been automatically stored in temporary cache files of defendant’s computers, since plaintiff’s counsel’s preservation letter said nothing about preserving temporary cache files, defendant had no reason to believe such files were relevant, files were deleted automatically and not through any affirmative action by defendant, defendant produced forensic images of its hard drives, and plaintiff established little if any prejudice from loss of cache files
Nature of Case: Copyright infringement and violations of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act
Electronic Data Involved: Copies of archived website screenshots automatically stored in temporary cache files of defendant’s computers
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