Inspection – Page 18 – Electronic Discovery Law

Strasser v. Yalamanchi, 783 So.2d 1087 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Affirming jury award for plaintiff, where plaintiff had been permitted to add claim for negligent destruction of evidence based on defendant’s failure to preserve electronic records and computer hard drive, court found no error in allowing plaintiff to introduce at trial evidence of defendant’s discovery misconduct. Court further concluded that strong statements of disapproval of defendant’s discovery abuses did not require trial judge’s recusal.

Nature of Case: Breach of contract suit between former partners

Electronic Data Involved: Computer hard drive

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

3M v. Pribyl, 259 F.3d 587, 606 n.5 (7th Cir. 2001)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Negative inference instruction warranted where six gigabytes of music were downloaded onto hard drive the night before the computer was to be turned over for inspection

Nature of Case: Manufacturer sued former employees and their new competing company for misappropriation of trade secrets

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drive

YCA, LLC v. Berry, 2004 WL 1093385 (N.D. Ill May 7, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court denied defendant’s motion to strike the testimony of plaintiff’s computer expert (who recovered “plethora” of deleted documents from defendant’s old YCA computer) since any delay in disclosing the expert and the recovered material was justified given defendant’s failure to disclose that his old computer might contain relevant evidence

Nature of Case: Breach of nondisclosure agreement, tortious interference

Electronic Data Involved: Deleted documents, computer hard drive

R.S. Creative, Inc. v. Creative Cotton, Ltd., 89 Cal. Rptr. 2d 353 (Cal. Ct. App. 1999)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Trial court properly imposed terminating sanctions against plaintiff for egregious discovery abuses, including the deletion of files from hard drives after plaintiff had stipulated that computers and diskettes would not be operated or touched until defendants’ computer expert could examine them

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drive, computer files

Vision Point of Sale, Inc. v. Haas, 2004 WL 5326424 (Ill. Cir. Ct. Sept. 27, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court provided direction to parties for implementing injunction, ordering among other things: (1) defendant to obtain new computers of its choice and at its expense to replace all existing computers and servers; (2) defendant to choose which files would be transferred to new computers; (3) plaintiff?s expert to observe copying and transfer, and examine new computers to confirm they do not contain plaintiff?s data; (4) after transfer, defendant?s old computers to be stored and kept available for forensic discovery, the cost of which would be borne 75% by defendant and 25% by plaintiff, except that plaintiff?s expert fees to date to be divided evenly between plaintiff and defendant

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of proprietary information

Electronic Data Involved: 30 computers and 2 servers of defendant

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