Author - kgates

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. Haeger, 581 U.S. ___ (2017)

In this rare opinion from our Supreme Court addressing discovery, the court considered “a federal court’s inherent authority to sanction a litigant for bad-faith conduct by ordering it to pay the other side’s legal fees.” The court held that “such an order is limited to the fees the innocent party incurred solely because of the misconduct—or put another way, to the fees that party would not have incurred but for the bad faith.” Because neither the trial court nor the appellate court applied the correct legal standard, the judgment of the Court of Appeals (9th Cir.) was reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings.

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Hsueh v. N.Y. State Dep’t of Fin. Servs., No. 15 Civ. 3401 (PAC), 2017 WL 1194706 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 31, 2017)

In this case arising from claims of sexual harassment at work, the court found that an adverse inference was the appropriate remedy for Plaintiff’s deletion of a recorded conversation with an HR representative. In the course of its analysis, the court agreed with Defendants that “Rule 37(e) applies only to situations where ‘a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve’ ESI; not to situations where, as here, a party intentionally deleted the recording” and thus relied upon inherent authority to impose sanctions.

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ILWU-PMA Welfare Plan Bd. of Trs. v. Connecticut Gen. Life. Ins. Co., No. C 15-02965 WHA, 2017 WL 345988 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 24, 2017)

In this case, ESI was lost when Defendant’s parent company sold another of its companies—on whose servers Defendant’s ESI was inexplicably stored—resulting in the transfer of that company’s servers and the ESI thereon to the third-party buyer. Concluding that Defendant failed to take reasonable steps to preserve the at-issue data, the court rejected Defendant’s argument that clauses in the sale agreement providing for “reasonable access to business information” including for “litigation purposes” and requiring the parties to retain information until the sixth anniversary of the agreement and not to destroy such information without notifying the other party were sufficient, particularly where despite such clauses, the information was not, in fact, available.  While the court concluded that additional information was required to proceed with a full Rule 37(e) analysis, it reopened discovery and ordered monetary sanctions to address the prejudice already established.

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Harleysville Ins. Co. v. Holding Funeral Home, Inc., No. 1:15cv00057 (W.D. Va. Feb. 9, 2017)

In this case, the court found that the placement of privileged information on a file share site and dissemination of the hyperlink to access that information without additional protections (e.g, password protection) constituted a failure to take reasonable steps to protect the information and that the attorney-client privilege and work-product protections were waived.  Notably, however, because defense counsel accessed the information but failed to notify Plaintiff’s counsel of the possible production of privileged materials, they were ordered to pay Plaintiff’s fees and costs in bringing the motion to disqualify them, which was denied.

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Fischer v. Forrest, —F. Supp. 3d—, 2017 WL 773694 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 28, 2017)

Judge Peck has “once again” issued a “discovery wake-up call,” this time regarding the effects of the 2015 amendments on the rules of discovery and in particular on Rule 34, addressing proper responses to requests for production. Specifically, the court noted that “one change that affects the daily work of every litigator is to Rule 34,” and instructed that “[m]ost lawyers who have not changed their ‘form file’ violate one or more (and often all three)” of the changes to the rule. Those changes require that “responses to discovery requests must”:

• State grounds for objections with specificity;
• An objection must state whether any responsive materials are being withheld on the basis of that objection; and
• Specify the time for production and, if a rolling production, when production will begin and when it will be concluded.

In these related cases, the court concluded that Defendants’ responses to discovery violated the discovery rules, including by failing to comply with the requirements of Rule 34(b) and failing to recognize and appropriately respond to the amendments to Rule 26(b)(1).

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Morgan Hill Concerned Parents Assoc. v. California Dept. Educ., No. 2:11-cv-3471 KJM AC, 2017 WL 445722 (E.D. Cal. Feb. 2, 2017)

In this case, the court granted Plaintiffs’ motion to compel production in native format with metadata, including the reproduction of information already produced, where Defendant failed to follow the protocol set forth in Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b) and unilaterally produced in “’load file’ format.”

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HCC Ins. Holdings, Inc. v. Flowers, No. 1:15-cv-3262-WSD, 2017 WL 393732 (N.D. Ga. Jan. 30, 2017)

In this case, the court declined to impose spoliation sanctions, despite Defendant and her husband’s “troubling” behavior, where Plaintiff failed to “present evidence to cast significant doubt” on the explanations for the at-issue behavior and failed to establish that the at-issue information—namely Plaintiff’s trade secrets and confidential information—had ever been “resident” on Defendant’s personal computer or otherwise in her control.

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F.T.C. v. DirecTV, Inc., Case No. 15-cv-01129-HSG (MEJ), 2016 WL 7386133 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 21, 2016)

In this case, the Court addressed Plaintiff’s motion for sanctions under Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e)(1) but, despite acknowledging that Defendant “could have been more forthcoming in its disclosures to the FTC, and/or more proactive in its preservation efforts,” declined to grant the request to exclude evidence, including Defendant’s expert’s report, absent a showing  of sufficient prejudice.  Instead, the Court ordered Defendant to make its expert available for a 4-hour deposition, should Plaintiff find it useful.

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Arrowhead Capital Fin., Ltd. v. Seven Arts Entm’t, Inc., No. 14 Civ. 6512 (KPF), 2016 WL 4991623 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 16, 2016)

For Defendants’ egregious discovery conduct, including obstructing depositions and failing to preserve and produce relevant documents, among other things, the Court imposed sanctions, including precluding them from litigating the issue of personal jurisdiction; imposing a “spoliation instruction, as appropriate, on any claims that are ultimately submitted to the jury”; ordering payment of Plaintiff’s attorneys fees related to the misconduct; and ordering the retention of a second outside counsel to review their files for additional discoverable materials and to represent them in future discovery-related proceedings.  Defendants’ manager and sometimes CEO was also found in contempt for his behavior throughout discovery, including attempting to minimize his own responsibility for the discovery deficiencies by claiming limited involvement and blaming others.  Finally, for acting in bad faith in a manner that improperly lengthened the proceedings and for making objections in bad faith, the Court also imposed “modest” sanctions against defense counsel.

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