Case Summaries – Page 399 – Electronic Discovery Law

Georgia Emission Testing Co. v. Reheis, 602 S.E.2d 153 (Ga. Ct. App. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Trial court abused its discretion in ordering parties to share costs of requested discovery equally, and should have ordered the requesting party to bear full cost where requested information should have been available in the requesting party?s own records, and the request involved the creation of a report that otherwise did not exist, and had to be specially created by a nonparty contractor at significant cost

Nature of Case: Suit to recover fees improperly assessed pursuant to Motor Vehicle Emission Inspection and Maintenance Act

Electronic Data Involved: Special report extracted from massive database of information

Hines v. Widnall, 183 F.R.D. 596 (N.D. Fla. 1998)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Granting plaintiff’s’ motion to compel production of computerized images of employment records which were created to facilitate review of the documents by geographically-dispersed defense counsel, court held that images did not constitute attorney work product since images did not contain mental impressions or legal theories and would not give plaintiffs insight into defense strategy or opinions; plaintiffs to pay only nominal copying costs and not portion of $250,000 imaging cost incurred by defendant

Nature of Case: Race discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Computerized images of employment records

Kormendi v. Computer Assoc. Int’l, Inc., 2002 WL 31385832 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 21, 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendant ordered to produce all email messages mentioning plaintiff for certain time period; plaintiff to pay the cost of the email search

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Email

McCurdy Group, LLC v. Am. Biomedical Group, Inc., 9 Fed. Appx. 822, 2001 WL 536974 (10th Cir. May 21, 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendant’s skepticism that plaintiff had not produced copies of all responsive documents did not entitle defendant to conduct physical inspection of plaintiff’s hard drives

Nature of Case: Breach of contract and quantum meruit claim

Electronic Data Involved: Computer and disc drives

Oved & Assocs. Const. Servs., Inc. v. Superior Court, 2003 WL 23028903 (Cal. App. Dec. 30, 2003) (Unpublished)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Petition for writ of mandate denied; based on evidence that a business computer was used for accounting and nothing else, and that there was a risk the hard drive might be purged, trial court acted properly when it ordered the petitioner to produce the computer’s hard drive

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of funds

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drive

Pueblo of Laguna v. United States, 60 Fed.Cl. 133 (2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Government’s past evidentiary failures in other similar litigation appeared to be so pervasive and systematic as to provide ample support for issuance of a document preservation order in this case

Nature of Case: Tribe sued government for mismanagement of trust accounts

Electronic Data Involved: Documents stored in various media related to parties’ claims

Smith v. Texaco Inc., 951 F. Supp. 109 (E.D. Tex. 1997)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendant’s motion to dissolve TRO requiring preservation of documents and electronic data denied, however, “to mitigate the high costs associated with electronic document storage, the court will permit defendants to delete electronic records in the ordinary and usual course of business; provided, however, that hard copy records be made and kept of any and all [relevant] electronic records . . .”

Nature of Case: Race discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Unspecified human resources records, payroll records

Tempco Elec. Heater Corp. v. Temperature Eng’g Co., 2004 WL 1254134 (N.D. Ill. June 3, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Since plaintiff elected not to conduct its own inspection of defendant’s hard drives, it could not avoid summary judgment on misappropriation of trade secrets claim by merely speculating about the presence of trade secret material on defendant’s computers, when defendant?s (admittedly cursory) inspection turned up no trade secret material

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, contract breach

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drives

United States v. Rigas, 281 F. Supp. 2d 733 (S.D.N.Y. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court ruled that no work product waiver occurred when entire computer network account of USAO paralegal was inadvertently copied onto working copy of hard drive held by prosecution as evidence and made available to defense; defense motion to retain privileged documents denied

Nature of Case: Criminal charges of conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud and securities fraud

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged documents on computer hard drive

In re Worldcom, Inc. Sec. Litig., 2004 WL 1068032 (S.D.N.Y. May 13, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Parties ordered to resolve, within five days, scope of electronic discovery to be made by each plaintiff through the completion of the meet and confer process; if no resolution reached, hearing to be held six days later to resolve outstanding issues

Nature of Case: Individual securities fraud actions

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic discovery

Catagory:Case Summaries