Case Summaries – Page 90 – Electronic Discovery Law

Whitesell Corp. v. Electrolux Home Prods., Inc., NO. CV 103-50, 2016 WL 1317673 (S.D. Ga. Mar. 31, 2016)

Dec 01 2016

Key Insight: Where promised emails were not produced but Defendant ultimately produced all documents relevant to the alleged spoliation, including ?preservation communications to document custodians, a list of custodians who were searched, the search terms used to conduct the search, and project documents and materials relating to such searches,? and also submitted a representative for an extensive Rule 30(b)(6) deposition, the court found Plaintiff?s request to compel production of ?every privileged document described as concerning data collection?[wa]s overly broad, unduly burdensome and ha[d] not been shown to relate to the issue at the forefront of this entire exercise?the missing Leon emails? despite acknowledging that ?otherwise privileged documents may be discoverable upon a preliminary showing of spoliation.?

Electronic Data Involved: Information related to preservation efforts, etc. where Plainitff alleged spoliation by Defendant and sought to compel production of privileged information

Sky Med. Supply Inc. v. SCS Support Claim Serv. Inc., No. 12- 6383, 2016 WL 4703656 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 7, 2016)

Dec 01 2016

Key Insight: Magistrate judge denied defendant?s motion to compel plaintiff to organize and label its document production ?so that it corresponds to the categories in the request? because the discovery documents were immediately available for inspection at plaintiff counsel?s office in electronic format already organized, identifiable, and searchable by claim number; defendants needing only to execute claims number searches to identify documents. Thus, the court concluded that unless and until an inspection is undertaken and shown to be unduly burdensome, the plaintiff?s offer to permit inspection of database comports with ?both the letter and spirit of rule 34.?

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Spear Mktg., Inc. v. Bancorpsouth Bank, No. 3:12-CV-3583-B, 2016 WL 193586 (N.D. Tex. Jan. 14, 2016)

Dec 01 2016

Key Insight: Court allowed Defendant to recover electronic conversion costs where conversions were undertaken to meet discovery requests of Plaintiff

Nature of Case: Theft of trade secrets

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs related to e-Discovery

Venator v. Interstate Res., Inc., No. CV 415-086, 2016 WL 1574090 (S.D. Ga. Apr. 15, 2016)

Dec 01 2016

Key Insight: Court found defense counsel had committed two violations of Rule 26(g)?s obligation to conduct a reasonable inquiry where counsel simply provided discovery requests to Defendant?s HR manager who conducted an independent, but ultimately inadequate, search for responsive information and failed to properly supervise the search, involve the IT Department (a best practice, according to the court), or follow up to ensure the search was adequate. Discussing the lack of a ?reasonable inquiry,? the court instructed that a non-lawyer will typically require more guidance than merely providing the requests at-issue and noted that ?attorneys have a post-investigation obligation to make sure all responsive information is provided.? Court ordered counsel to pay the reasonable expenses and fees associated with the motion for sanctions and for Defendant to pay $1000 but declined further sanctions where Defendant supplemented its response to discovery when additional responsive information was located.

Nature of Case: Claims arising from an industrial accident

Electronic Data Involved: Emails, ESI

Botey v. Green, No. 3:12-CV-01520, 2016 WL 1337665 (M.D. Pa. April 4, 2016)

Dec 01 2016

Key Insight: In this case, the court granted in part Plaintiff?s motion for sanctions where ESI was automatically destroyed despite a duty to preserve as the result of Defendant?s employees? failure to forward Plaintiff?s notice of litigation and request for preservation to corporate headquarters. Declining to impose an adverse inference, the court ordered that Defendants would not be allowed to rely on the destroyed records or other evidence designed to show their contents.

Nature of Case: Claims arising from traffic accident

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

In re Disposable Contact Lens AntiTrust Litig., No. 3:15-md-2626-J-20JRK, 2016 WL 6518660 (M.D. Fla. Nov. 1, 2016)

Dec 01 2016

Key Insight: Where the ?potential relevance? of the information sought was ?essentially undisputed,? but where Defendant claimed to have already spent $700,000 on discovery and that the request for 18 additional custodians could result in an expenditure of at least $1.5 million, court noted that the parties? dispute was essentially a question of proportionality and concluded a that two additional ?upper-management custodians? were warranted (as opposed to the seven requested) and also found that a sample of four sales manages was appropriate (as opposed to the eleven requested); as to Class Plaintiffs? request for a ?hit list? generated by applying the agreed-upon search terms to the collected materials, the court reasoned that in light of the number of custodians and the parties? agreement as to search terms, such a list seemed ?less valuable that it might otherwise be,? but ordered that if one was automatically generated, it should be produced

Nature of Case: Class Action

Electronic Data Involved: Additional Custodians

Miller v. Bank of Am., N.A., 201 So.3d 1286 (Fl. Dist. Ct. App. 2016)

Dec 01 2016

Key Insight: On appeal from a final judgment of foreclosure, the Appellate Court found the Trial Court erred in admitting a screen shot of a computer-generated document purporting to reflect the sale of the mortgage note to Defendant, over Appellant?s hearsay objection. The original note was lost, so Appellee?s witness, who testified regarding the sale of the note, ?relied entirely upon a screen shot of a computer-generated document referred to as a Loan Transfer History (LNTH)? to establish Defendant?s right to foreclose. The witness testified she did not know who entered the information displayed in the screen shot, or if it was entirely computer generated. The Court held ?Ms. Allen?s affirmative answers to business record foundation questions do no overcome her demonstrated lack of knowledge about the creation, accuracy or trustworthiness of the LNTH document.?

Nature of Case: Foreclosure

Electronic Data Involved: Screen Shot

Okada v. Whitehead, No. SACV 15-01449-JLS (KESx), 2016 WL 9448484 (C.D. Cal. June 16, 2016)

Dec 01 2016

Key Insight: Where Defendant explained that certain emails were not produced because he lost access to the account which subsequently expired and thus the emails were not in his possession custody or control, the court concluded that the duty to preserve was triggered prior to the expiration of the account by the filing of a separate lawsuit involving the same at-issue property in which the parties to this case were codefendants and explained in footnote that it could locate no case law limiting the duty to preserve to an adversary as opposed to all parties to litigation and noted that the duty to preserve ?may carry over to subsequent lawsuits involving the same subject matter?; finding the spoliation was prejudicial but not intentional, the court ordered the jury be informed of the failure to preserve, but not instructed to presume anything about the content of the emails

Nature of Case: Breach of Settlement Agreement

Electronic Data Involved: e-mail

Ballentine v. Las Vegas Metro Police Dept., NO. 2:14-cv-01584-APG-GWF, 2016 WL 3636917 (D. Nev. July 5, 2016)

Dec 01 2016

Key Insight: Among other things, court denied motion for protective order upon finding that Plaintiffs were ?entitled to obtain basic information sufficient to determine whether searches were reasonably conducted and the results properly verified? even without ?evidence that specific documents were destroyed or withheld? and reasoned that ?the fact that [Defendant?s] attorney(s) conducted or supervised the searches does not protect such non-privileged information from disclosure?

Electronic Data Involved: Information re: efforts to preserve, search

U.S. v. Wells Fargo Bank, No. 1:06-CV-0547-AT, 2016 WL 7365195 (N.D. Ga. May 26, 2016)

Dec 01 2016

Key Insight: The Court granted Defendant?s Motion for a Protective Order and held that under limited circumstances, a party may seek to share reasonable costs related to reviewing documents prior to their production. The Court considered vendor fees to be a valid target for cost-sharing under the facts of this case: discovery spanned more than a decade, the costs currently under review were a small fraction of the costs incurred by Defendant in discovery and there were no concerns that cost shifting would deter Relators or others. Further, Defendant showed that ?almost the entirety of its requested costs were incurred in attempting to respond to Relators? discovery requests, and not incurred as a result of a self-interested privilege review.?

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic mortgage loan files

Catagory:Case Summaries