Case Summaries – Page 282 – Electronic Discovery Law

Kumar v. Hilton Hotels Corp., 2009 WL 1683479 (W.D. Tenn. June 16, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Court endorsed ?middle ground? approach to a determination of the waiver of privilege, as adopted by FRE 502, and ordered the return of privileged and work product documents produced by defendant upon finding that the production was inadvertent, that defendant took reasonable steps to prevent disclosure, that counsel took immediate steps to rectify the error and that ?the number and magnitude of the disclosures in light of the overall production weigh[ed] against waiver?

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged email and hard copy

Multiquip, Inc. v. Water Mgmt. Systs., LLC, 2009 WL 4261214 (D. Idaho Nov. 23, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where, as a result of the autofill function in email, defendant mistakenly sent a privileged communication to a third party which was thereafter forwarded to opposing counsel in the litigation, court undertook waiver analysis pursuant to ER 502 and found that privilege was not waived where defendant disclosed the communication inadvertently, where defendant?s reliance on ?a system that had worked in particular way in the past? was reasonable to prevent disclosure, and where defendant?s counsel took immediate steps to rectify the error upon learning of the disclosure

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged email

GW Equity LLC v. Xcentric Ventures LLC, 2009 WL 62168 (N.D. Tex. Jan. 9, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Court adopted magistrate judge?s recommendations and denied plaintiff?s motion for sanctions for intentional spoliation of website content, despite defendants’ failure to suspend its policy allowing content to be edited, where evidence showed that no edits were made to the content at issue and thus plaintiff suffered no prejudice

Nature of Case: Defamation

Electronic Data Involved: Website contents

Grochinski v. Schlossberg, 402 B.R. 825 (N.D. Ill. 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: U.S. District Court affirmed bankruptcy court?s sanction that facts alleged against defendant would be taken as established and that defendant was prohibited from opposing trustee?s claims against him where forensic evidence indicated that defendant destroyed evidence by installing cleaning software and by installing new operating systems on relevant computers despite his ongoing duty to preserve

Nature of Case: Adversary action alleging fraudulent transfer

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, hard drives

In re Tamer, 877 N.Y.S.2d 874 (Surr. Ct. N.Y. 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Finding electronic production sufficient to satisfy the relevant statute requiring production of documents as kept in the regular course of business or organized to correspond to the category of the request, court granted objectants motion to compel trustees to accept production in electronic form and not hard copy and ordered such production to be accompanied by an index identifying the document produced in response to each demand and the electronic file where the document was stored

Nature of Case: Contested accounting proceeding

Electronic Data Involved: Production of documents in electronic form

Eastview Healthcare, LLC v. Synertx, Inc., 674 S.E. 2d 641 (Ga. Ct. App. 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Trial court did not abuse discretion in granting plaintiff?s motion to strike defendants? affidavit and attached emails where emails were not properly authenticated; appellate court found defendants? reliance on Willis v. Hill, 116 Ga. App. 848 (1967) to appeal the trial court?s ruling was misplaced where Willis held that ?”[u]pon production of copies pursuant to a notice to produce, the producing party admits the correctness of the copies and further proof is unnecessary in order for the moving party[, i.e., the requesting party,] to introduce them into evidence? but where in the present case the emails sought to be admitted were produced by defendants, i.e. the party seeking their admission, and thus Willis was inapplicable

Nature of Case: Breach of contract, collect on open account

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Plunk v. Village of Elwood, Ill., 2009 WL 1444436 (N.D. Ill. May 20, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where audio tape of council meeting was lost despite duty to preserve and where defendants failed to rebut plaintiffs? allegation that the tape was erased or replaced beyond an unsupported assertion of inadvertence, court precluded defendants from relying on occurrences at the meeting and ordered an adverse inferences to the jury; where evidence indicated computers subject to preservation were defragged repeatedly, and perhaps erased intentionally, and where defendants failed to preserve 6 hard drives despite agreeing do so, court ordered jury to be informed of failure to preserve, that defendants were precluded from arguing that the absence of evidence supported their contentions, and that the jury would be given permission to draw an adverse inference

Nature of Case: Civil rights action

Electronic Data Involved: Audio tape, hard drives

Kravetz v. Paul Rever Life Ins. Co., 2009 WL 1639736 (D. Ariz. June 11, 2009) (Not for Publication)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: For purposes of determining the number of hours worked by plaintiff following his injury, court granted motion to compel the production of several hard drives and storage devices used by plaintiff to conduct business but limited the inspection to relevant metadata and forbade inspection of the substance of any documents

Nature of Case: Disability claim

Electronic Data Involved: Metadata on hard drives

Newman v. Borders, 257 F.R.D. 1 (D.D.C. 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where defendant?s 30(b)(6) deponent did not have sufficient knowledge of defendant?s document and email retention policies or how searches of its electronically stored information were conducted and where the parties could not reach agreement regarding the proper disclosure or production of such information, court denied plaintiff?s request to take additional depositions and ordered defendant to submit an affidavit responding to nine questions crafted by the court aimed at disclosing the disputed information

Nature of Case: Race discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Information about email and document retention and seach methodology

Brodsky v. Humana, Inc., 2009 WL 1956450 (N.D. Ill. July 8, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Addressing whether certain of plaintiff?s requests were unduly burdensome relative to the likely benefit of production, court granted in part and denied in party plaintiff?s motion to compel upon determining that certain requests were unduly burdensome in light of the estimated time and effort to respond

Nature of Case: Violations of Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, mirror image drives

Catagory:Case Summaries