Archive - October 2020

1
Milke v. City of Phoenix (D. Ariz. 2020)
2
In re: 3M Combat Arms Earplug Prods. Liab. Litig. (N.D. Fla., Oct. 2020)
3
Haroun v. ThoughtWorks, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 2020)
4
Rich v. Butowsky (D.D.C., 2020)

Milke v. City of Phoenix (D. Ariz. 2020)

Key Insight: The court dismissed plaintiff’s civil rights action based on spoliation of physical and ESI evidence, and for failure to submit complete and accurate discovery responses. The court previously sanctioned plaintiff for spoliation of evidence and determined that lesser sanctions short of dismissal could not cure the prejudice to defendant. Plaintiff, her agents, and her counsel failed to preserve website and social media sites and took affirmative steps on multiple occasions to destroy the evidence after litigation became reasonably foreseeable.

Nature of Case: Civil Rights Act

Electronic Data Involved: Social media and websites

Case Summary

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

Rich v. Butowsky (D.D.C., 2020)

Key Insight: A rule 45 motion to quash subpoenas on electronic subpoenas for electronic identities of anonymous users uses the 2themart.com test and are very fact specific

Nature of Case: Defamation

Electronic Data Involved: User account information

Keywords: Murder, twitter, first amendment, motion to quash, subpoena, defamation

Copyright © 2022, K&L Gates LLP. All Rights Reserved.