Inspection – Page 15 – Electronic Discovery Law

Advantacare Health Partners, LP v. Access IV, 2005 WL 1398641 (N.D. Cal. June 14, 2005) (Unpublished)

Dec 01 2005

Key Insight: Court denied individual defendant’s motion for reconsideration of default judgment entered against her and other defendants for continued destruction of evidence and continued possession of plaintiff’s proprietary files; although there was no evidence that individual defendant personally engaged in wrongful acts, she was not insulated by simply leaving compliance with court orders to other defendant; further, individual had numerous opportunities to disavow knowledge of misconduct or detail what efforts she personally took to comply with court orders but never did so

Nature of Case: Misapproriation of trade secrets and related torts

Electronic Data Involved: Proprietary information in electronic form

Inventory Locator Serv., LLC v. PartsBase, Inc., 2005 WL 6062855 (W.D. Tenn. Oct. 19, 2005)

Dec 01 2005

Key Insight: Where there was no evidence that server logs were erased in bad faith and facts suggested that defendant was, at most, merely negligent, since it took reasonable steps to preserve relevant data — it retained and consulted with technical expert; on advice of its expert, it made a copy of the relevant server logs on CDs that could not be overwritten; it stored copies of the data on its server; and it made the data on the server available for inspection by plaintiff prior to the time it was overwritten — and where plaintiff was unable to demonstrate any real prejudice from the loss of some metadata in server logs, magistrate judge found no basis for spoliation sanctions of any kind and recommended denial of plaintiff’s sanctions motion

Nature of Case: Parties asserted claims under Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, each arguing that the other had obtained unlawful access to databases

Electronic Data Involved: Metadata; server logs

McCarthy v. Philips Elecs. N. Am. Corp., 2005 WL 6157347 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. June 9, 2005)

Dec 01 2005

Key Insight: Where plaintiff?s affidavit in support of motion stated that emails were used routinely in the course of defendants’ business, described defendants? backup process, and asserted that he was able to run a search on Lotus Notes folders he maintained, resulting in production by him to defendants of 5,000 emails, and defendants provided little information except to state that backup tapes were routinely overwritten and that deleted emails could not be recovered, court noted that defendants? efforts to preserve evidence or lack thereof could be an issue in the case and allowed plaintiff to designate IT expert to inspect hard drives and backup media identified in discovery demands; court further directed defendants to provide access, subject to inspection protocol and confidentiality stipulation to be submitted by parties for court approval

Nature of Case: Disability discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Emails, hard drives

Bd. of Managers of Atrium Condo. v. West 79th St. Corp., 792 N.Y.S.2d 444 (N.Y. App. Div. 2005)

Dec 01 2005

Key Insight: Court denied defendant’s request for “electronic discovery of plaintiff’s attorneys’ computers” to determine whether affidavit of service of reply brief was backdated

Electronic Data Involved: Plaintiff’s counsel’s computers

Advantacare Health Partners, LP v. Access IV, 2004 WL 1837997 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 17, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court denied motion for default judgment but granted motion for an adverse inference instruction and $20,000 in monetary sanctions where, in advance of court-ordered inspection, defendants deleted from their computers numerous electronic files which had been copied from former employer’s computer systems prior to their resignations, and, after the inspection, defendants failed to comply with court’s order that they delete all of plaintiffs’ files from their computers

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets and related torts

Electronic Data Involved: Proprietary information in electronic form

Anderson v. Crossroads Capital Partners, LLC, 2004 WL 256512 (D. Minn. Feb. 10, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Plaintiff’s use of Cyberscrub data wiping software prior to court-ordered inspection of her computer and after agreeing on the record that she would not purge her hard drive or delete any documents, and her misrepresentations about age of hard drive, were not sufficiently egregious to warrant dismissal but did warrant an adverse inference instruction

Nature of Case: Sexual harassment and whistleblower claims by former employee

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drive of plaintiff’s personal computer

Bertsch v. Duemeland, 639 N.W.2d 455 (N.D. 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Plaintiff denied access to hard drives of computers acquired by defendant after alleged torts took place

Nature of Case: Tortious interference, misappropriation of trade secrets, defamation

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drives (to locate email)

Byrne v. Byrne, 650 N.Y.S.2d 499 (1996)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Wife’s acts of removing laptop from family home and delivering it to her attorney for safekeeping were not wrongful; court established protocol for inspection and production

Nature of Case: Divorce proceeding

Electronic Data Involved: Financial data stored on laptop provided by husband’s employer

Columbia Valley Reg’l Med. Ctr. v. Bannert, 112 S.W. 3d 193 (Tex. App. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Reversing jury verdict of over $1.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages, court found evidence not legally sufficient to support finding that manager authored offending memorandum; computer experts testified regarding creation of memo, history of revisions and locations of copies

Nature of Case: Former employee sued former employer and managers for libel

Electronic Data Involved: Word document

Convolve, Inc. v. Compaq Computer Corp., 223 F.R.D. 162 (S.D.N.Y. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court rejected plaintiff’s request for direct access to Compaq’s hard drives, servers, and databases since plaintiff had failed to show widespread destruction or withholding of relevant information by Compaq; court further rejected plaintiff’s request for sanctions for failure to preserve certain evidence

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drives, servers, databases, email and electronic data

Tag:Inspection