Case Summaries – Page 144 – Electronic Discovery Law

Pegasus Aviation I, Inc. v. Varig Logistica S.A., 2014 WL 2522717 (N.Y. App. Div. June 5, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Divided appellate court reversed trial court?s order granting adverse inference instruction against defendants where plaintiffs did not establish relevance of lost material, facts did not support a finding of gross negligence on the part of defendants, but at most, a finding of simple negligence in failing to ensure that acquired company instituted a litigation hold, and plaintiffs presented no evidence that such a hold would have saved the relevant ESI from destruction when the acquired company?s entire computer system crashed

Safety Today, Inc. v. Roy, No. 2:12-cv-510, 2014 WL 1049962 (S.D. Ohio Mar. 17, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Magistrate judge denied plaintiff’s motion for monetary sanctions based on defendants’ alleged disobedience of discovery orders, which plaintiff asserted made its imaging of certain electronic devices more expensive than necessary, since plaintiff did not submit any proof that piecemeal production of devices for imaging caused it additional vendor expense and record was too sparse to find a violation of the express terms of the orders

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of confidential business information, unfair competition

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drives, servers and smart phones

Didier v. Abbott Labs, No. 13-2046-JWL, 2014 WL 219851 (D. Kan. Jan. 21, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Finding that steps taken by defendants to locate responsive documents and their continued effort to work with plaintiff and supplement their production appeared sufficient, court declined to impose drastic sanctions requested by plaintiff but did allow plaintiff to re-depose particular witness as to emails that were produced after the witness’s deposition since plaintiff may have been prejudiced by her inability to question the witness regarding the content of those emails

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: ESI including text messages

Toppan Photomasks, Inc. v. Park, No. 13-cv-03323-MMC (JCS), 2014 WL 2567914 (N.D. Cal. May 29, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where defendant?s duty to preserve arose upon threat of litigation and where he was reminded of the obligation in correspondence with opposing counsel and then ordered by the court to preserve, the court found that the level of culpability rose with each indication and thus found that the defendant had failed to preserve ESI in bad faith but, absent evidence of the level of resulting prejudice (attempts to recover the deleted data had not yet been undertaken), declined to impose a an adverse inference but ordered monetary sanctions

Nature of Case: Trade secret, breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: ESI on multiple devices

Dewhurst v. Century Aluminum Co., No. 2:09-1546, 2014 WL 555164 (S.D. W. Va. Feb. 12, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court denied defendant’s motion for spoliation sanctions based on union’s failure to preserve evidence, noting that union appeared to have been diligent in trying to gather up relevant documents once litigation commenced, there was no way to determine when the missing records were destroyed, and union was autonomous organization and none of the existing plaintiffs shouldered any blame for the union’s negligence

Nature of Case: Class action regarding defendant’s obligation to restore certain retiree healthcare benefits

Electronic Data Involved: E-mail and other ESI

McDaniel v. Loyola Univ. Med. Center, No. 13-cv-06500, 2014 WL 1775685 (N.D. Ill. May 5, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Finding that plaintiff failed to demonstrate that defendants would destroy discoverable information or that plaintiff would suffer irreparable harm without a preservation order, court denied motion for preservation order as superfluous and needlessly burdensome where defendants were fully apprised of the scope and gravity of their preservation duties and the consequences of breaching them

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination, breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic data and e-mail

JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., v. East-West Logistics, LLC, No. 1-12-1111, 2014 WL 1292905 (Ill. App. Ct. Mar. 31, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Trial court did not abuse its discretion when it ordered defendant to pay $3,026 of plaintiff’s requested $18,771 electronic discovery costs, as court had discretion under court rule to issue a protective order as justice required, had ordered the parties to confer on the scope of production and reserved the allocation of costs, and had properly balanced defendant’s need for the discovery material against the expense of the production incurred by plaintiff

Nature of Case: Action to collect amounts due under credit agreement and enforce guaranty

Electronic Data Involved: Electronically stored documents

Slep-Tone Entm?t Corp. v. Granito, No. CV 12-298 TUC DCB, 2014 WL 65297 (D. Ariz. Jan. 8, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where defendant used special software to erase computer hard drives that allegedly contained infringing karaoke accompaniment tracks marked with plaintiffs’ registered trademarks, court determined that defendant acted willfully in destroying the evidence, which he knew to be especially relevant, and that his admitted spoliation of evidence severely impaired the plaintiffs’ ability to litigate the case; accordingly, court denied defendant?s motion for summary judgment based on lack of evidence, and granted summary judgment for plaintiffs on issue of liability, instructing that plaintiffs must still prove up damages

Nature of Case: Trademark and tradedress infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Unauthorized counterfeit duplicates of karaoke accompaniment tracks on hard drives

Oleksy v. Gen. Elec. Co., No. 6 C 1245, 2014 WL 3820352 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 1, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where, at time complaint was filed, defendant should have reasonably foreseen that files created by its accused process would be material to the parties’ claims, yet defendant continued to overwrite its files per its standard practice instead of saving the files either manually or automatically, court denied plaintiff’s request for adverse inference instruction but ordered defendant to reconstitute or recreate three complete sequences of old computer code at its own cost

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Computer code

Riley v. Marriott Int?l, Inc., No. 12-CV-6242P, 2014 WL 4794657 (W.D.N.Y. Sep. 25, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Where hotel’s security system recorded elevator area before, during and after plaintiff’s fall, but hotel produced only seven minutes of footage, which began about one minute before the accident and ended before plaintiff was removed from the ground and placed into a wheelchair, and hotel offered no sworn facts concerning the circumstances under which the footage was destroyed, court found hotel was grossly negligent at minimum and concluded that permissive adverse inference instruction was appropriate and sufficient to deter hotel from similar future conduct and restore plaintiff’s position in the litigation

Nature of Case: Slip and fall

Electronic Data Involved: Security camera footage of area before, during and after plaintiff’s fall

Catagory:Case Summaries