eDiscovery Import – Page 4 – Electronic Discovery Law

Selective Ins. Co. of the Se. v. RLI Ins. Co., 5:12CV2126, 2017WL 1206036 (N.D. Ohio Mar. 31, 2017)

Dec 01 2017

Key Insight: Court agreed with recommendation of magistrate judge and held costs incurred by a non-party for compliance with an order compelling production are reimbursable. The magistrate judge ordered the Non-Party to submit a cost estimate for reviewing the documents, preparing a privilege log and producing the non-privileged documents. The cost estimate submitted was over $120,000. Defendant then presented a pared down document request and the magistrate judge issued a Modified Subpoena. The Court accepted the magistrate judge?s recommendation and ordered Defendant to pay $14,174.32 for the costs to Non-Party of complying with the Modified Subpoena stating that Defendant ?was the recipient of the fruits of Non-Party[?s] labor.? The Court also agreed with the magistrate judge that non-parties are not protected by the work product doctrine.

Nature of Case: Non-party compensation for document production

Electronic Data Involved: emails and non-electronic documents

Zamora v. Stellar Mgmt. Grp., Inc. , 3:16-05028-CV-RK, 2017 WL 1362688 (W.D. Mo., Mar. 11, 2017)

Dec 01 2017

Key Insight: Where Plaintiff in an employment litigation failed to preserve a potentially relevant Facebook post, deleted her work phone before returning it and failed to preserve information contained on numerous other phones (e.g., because they were lost, etc.), court found that ?Plaintiff cannot be relied on to disclose all relevant communications? and granted motion to allow access to the mirror image of a phone belonging to a former employee and co-worker of the plaintiff and to allow defendant to subpoena the former employee to produce a second phone for inspection and ordered production of Plaintiff?s current work phone, to be reviewed by a Special Master for potentially relevant communications, with the cost of the Special Master to be split between the parties ; court found request for dismissal or an adverse inference was premature

Nature of Case: Employment litigation

Electronic Data Involved: ESI from cellular phones, Facebook

Organik Kimya, San. ve. Tic. A.S. v. Int?l Trad Comm?n, 848 F.3d 994 (Fed. Cir. 2017)

Dec 01 2017

Key Insight: Court affirmed the sanction of default judgment imposed in 2014 by the International Trade Commission for Appellant?s egregious spoliation of evidence in bad faith and in violation of the Administrative Law Judge?s orders (including, among other things, repeatedly overwriting files, backdating a computer?s internal clock to affect metadata, running CCleaner)

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Barcroft Media, Ltd. v. Coed Media Grp., LLC, No. 16-CV-7634 (JMF) (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 28, 2017)

Dec 01 2017

Key Insight: Spoliation sanctions for failing to preserve the webpages in which the images were published.

Nature of Case: Intellectual Property infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Images, Webpages

View Case Opinion

B&R Supermarket, Inc. v. Visa, Inc., No. 16-cv-01150-WHA (MEJ), 2017 WL 235182 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 19, 2017)

Dec 01 2017

Key Insight: Court found requested data was relevant to class certification but, where Defendant indicated that Plaintiff?s requests ?encompass [ ] tens of millions of transactions and weekly data for each of the more than 6 million merchants that accept American Express? that ?is scattered over at least 6 databases at American Express,? court agreed with Defendant that the requested discovery created an ?enormous burden? and therefore ordered sampling, in a size to be agreed upon by the parties at a court-ordered meet and confer

Nature of Case: class action

Electronic Data Involved: Chargeback-related data (ESI)

Basra v. Ecklund Logistics, Inc., 8:16CV83, 2017 WL 1207482 (D. Neb., March 31, 2017)

Dec 01 2017

Key Insight: Plaintiff?s spouse was killed in a tractor-trailer accident when he collided with another tractor-trailer driven by Defendant?s employee. Plaintiff claimed Defendant destroyed or failed to preserve relevant documents in anticipation of litigation and requested sanctions in the form of an adverse inference instruction to the jury. The Court found Plaintiffs did not establish Defendant intentionally destroyed evidence with a desire to suppress the truth. Some of the information did not exist, some was purged per standard practice and much of the material requested by Plaintiffs was provided to them from other sources. The Court denied Plaintiff?s motion with respect to its claim for spoliation. Plaintiffs also requested attorney?s fees and costs as a sanction for Defendant?s failure to produce certain documents. Defendants inadvertently omitted its 2012 income statement but produced those from four other years. The Court held that sanctions were not warranted.

Nature of Case: Tort (Tractor-trailer accident)

Electronic Data Involved: ESI including Driver logs, Qualcomm data, PeopleNet server data

Camicia v. Cooley, No. 74048-2-I, 2017 WL 679988 (Wash. Ct. App. Feb. 21, 2017)

Dec 01 2017

Key Insight: Where Defendant destroyed potentially relevant tort-claim records pursuant to its record retention schedule during pending litigation among other discovery abuses and where the trial court therefore ordered monetary sanctions for the discovery violations and indicated that it would consider a spoliation instruction, the appellate court concluded that the trial court?s record did not support a finding that ?the City destroyed the evidence in bad faith, knew that the evidence was important to the pending litigation, or had the duty to preserve the evidence? and thus, it was not clear that spoliation had occurred; error was harmless where $10,000 fine was not based on a finding of spoliation

Nature of Case: Tort (bicycling accident)

Dallas Buyers Club LLC v. Huszar, No. 3:15?cv?907?AC, 2017 WL 481469 (D. Or. Feb. 6, 2017)

Dec 01 2017

Key Insight: Where Defendant?s use of an internal utility tool on the at-issue server resulted in all of the data thereon being overwritten but where the District Court Judge found ?credible? Defendant?s explanations that he did not believe the hard drives contained relevant information and where the ?unique facts? of the case, namely the focus on Defendant?s TOR Node – which ?routed information for other end users around the world? but did not contain Defendant?s personal data – contributed to the court?s disagreement with the Magistrate Judge?s finding of intent, the court adopted the Magistrate Judge?s finding of spoliation but declined to impose default judgement and instead concluded that an adverse inference was appropriate

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

View Case Opinion

Keathley v. Grange Ins. Co. of Mich., 15-cv-11888, 2017 WL 1173767 (E.D.Mich., Mar. 30, 2017)

Dec 01 2017

Key Insight: In this insurance litigation, the district court affirmed an order of the magistrate judge requiring Defendant?s counsel to provide additional information regarding the fate of relevant photographs but, upon review of the declaration submitted, found that it did not adequately address the loss and ordered that a representative of Defendant?s IT personnel be deposed; in concluding that a duty to preserve existed prior to Defendant?s ?final? determination regarding the claim, court reasoned in part that Defendant had asserted attorney client privilege with its outside counsel re: ?coverage issues? prior to its final determination and also noted its decision to require Plaintiff to testify under oath, indicating its skepticism of Plaintiff?s claim, and Defendant?s own request for Plaintiff to submit additional evidence, including any pictures

Nature of Case: Insurance litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Photographs

Andrews v. Autoliv Japan, Ltd., 1:14-cv-3432-WSD, 2017 WL 2805868 (N.D. Ga. June 29, 2017)

Dec 01 2017

Key Insight: Court denied Defendant?s request for e-discovery costs. Defendant?s vendor provided services to create optical character recognition (?OCR?) image and text files for Defendant?s productions. The Court concluded that the costs of creating electronic copies of documents are recoverable but the costs of creating a dynamic, indexed and searchable database that allows counsel to search for and within the documents are not recoverable. The Court denied Defendant?s recovery of costs for the technical services provided by their e-discovery vendor.

Nature of Case: Taxable costs

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Author - eDiscovery Import