Cotton v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 12-2731-JW, 2013 WL 3819974 (D. Kan. July 24, 2013)

Key Insight: Addressing Plaintiff?s motion to compel, court declined to compel Defendant to search the email accounts of four Costco employees and to produce any messages containing any of sixty-four search terms where many of the terms were not ?racially charged? and some were duplicative and where, save two of the terms, Plaintiff had not alleged that the terms were ever used by any of Costco?s employees; court denied motion to compel production of text messages sent from certain of Costco?s employees? personal cell phones where the court reasoned that Costco had not issued the phones to the employees for a work purpose and did not have ?possession, custody or control? of the text messages

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination based on race

Electronic Data Involved: Emails, text messages on employees’ personal cell phones