Case Summaries – Page 402 – Electronic Discovery Law

Hester v. Bayer Corp., 206 F.R.D. 683 (M.D. Ala. 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: After case was removed to federal court, defendant obtained order vacating state court’s entry of ex parte preservation order requiring defendant to “suspend all routine destruction of documents, including but not limited to, recycling back-up tapes, automated deletion of e-mail, and reformatting hard drives,” compliance with which defendant estimated to cost $50,000/month

Nature of Case: Product liability

Electronic Data Involved: Documents and information in paper or electronic format

Kintera, Inc. v. Convio, Inc., 219 F.R.D. 503 (S.D. Cal. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Emails exchanged between a narrow group of plaintiff corporate business’s non-attorney employees were protected from discovery by attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine; further, statements on plaintiff’s web site waived work product protection for affidavits described therein, but did not waive work product protection with respect to plaintiff’s recorded conversation with competitor’s former employees and email exchanges with them

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets

Electronic Data Involved: Email

MasterCard Int’l v. Moulton, 2004 WL 1393992 (S.D.N.Y. June 22, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Finding no bad faith in defendant’s failure to preserve email since defendants simply persevered in their normal document retention practices, court nonetheless ruled that plaintiff would be allowed to prove the facts reflecting the non-retention of email and argue to the trier of fact that this destruction of evidence, in addition to other proof offered at trial, warranted certain inferences

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email

OpenTV v. Liberate Tech., 219 F.R.D. 474 (N.D. Cal. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Applying Zubulake balancing test, court ordered parties to share equally the cost of extracting source code from defendant’s database; however, defendant solely to bear cost of copying source code for production once it is extracted

Nature of Case: Infringement action

Electronic Data Involved: Source code

Propath Services, L.L.P. v. Ameripath, Inc., 2004 WL 2389214 (N.D. Tex. Oct. 21, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court entered preliminary injunction prohibiting defendants from, among other things, deleting, destroying or altering any document, email or computer drive containing any ProPath or ProPath related information, and required defendants to segregate said items into a confidential file not to be used in their business

Nature of Case: Contract breach, misappropriation of confidential information, breach of fiduciary duty

Electronic Data Involved: Email and other electronic files

Sempra Energy Trading Corp. v. Brown, 2004 WL 2714404 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 30, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Claiming that it had already spent approximately $1.4 million to restore, review and produce email, and may have to expend as much as $3 million more in order to complete the document review and production, nonparty unsuccessfully attempted to avoid compliance with discovery orders in state proceeding by seeking injunctive and declaratory relief in federal court

Nature of Case: Action for declaratory and injunctive relief

Electronic Data Involved: Email stored on backup tapes

Symantec Corp. v. McAfee Assoc., Inc., 1998 WL 740798 (N.D. Cal. June 9, 1998)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Where defendants admitted to removing customer sales information from sales representatives’ computers by means of “delete and scrub” utilities in response to plaintiff’s claim that such material constituted trade secrets, and retained copies of deleted information, court granted unopposed motion for preliminary injunction enjoining defendant from distributing customer sales information and recalling and impounding customer sales information database

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement; plaintiff also alleged that defendant obtained private customer sales information from plaintiff’s former sales representative

Electronic Data Involved: Database containing customer sales information

United States v. Koch Ind., Inc., 197 F.R.D. 463 (N.D. Okl. 1998)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Defendant was negligent in failing to determine which computer tapes in tape library contained information relevant to imminent and ongoing litigation and in failing to communicate clear guidelines regarding preservation of information to data processing personnel and tape librarian; no adverse inference, but plaintiff could inform jury about destruction of tapes and impact on plaintiff’s proof

Nature of Case: Action under False Claims Act

Electronic Data Involved: Computer tapes

Wilson v. Sundstrand Corp., 2003 WL 21961359 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 18, 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: As sanction for discovery abuse and tardy production of “smoking gun” email, court precluded defendant from opposing the admission in evidence of various emails and records, and ordered defendant to pay plaintiffs’ reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred in connection with motion and related discovery

Nature of Case: Airline crash litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Walker v. Cash Flow Consultants, Inc., 200 F.R.D. 613 (N.D. Ill. 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: While granting without prejudice defendant’s motion to dismiss and denying without prejudice plaintiff’s motion to certify class, court found that plaintiff’s request for entry of a document preservation order was overbroad but not entirely unnecessary, and entered a more narrow document preservation order

Nature of Case: Class action alleging violations of Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

Electronic Data Involved: Computer information relating to defendant’s debt collection policies

Catagory:Case Summaries