Key Insight: Plaintiff was discovered to have fabricated emails. Court awarded over $500,000 in damages to Defendant.
Nature of Case: antitrust litigation
Electronic Data Involved: Emails
Keywords: sanctions,m fabricated evidence
Key Insight: Plaintiff’s Motion for Sanctions was granted and denied in part. Defendants had failed to produce documents and comply with discovery obligations. The Court concluded that Defendants, but not Defendants’ counsel, had acted in bad faith by making misrepresentations, and issued monetary sanctions against Defendants and barred a previously pled defense. The Court denied Plaintiff’s request of a sanction of precluding Defendants from raising a new defense. Moreover, the Court declined to award fees and costs for Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Defendants to produce financial records.
Nature of Case: Wrongful Termination, Family Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”), Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”)
Electronic Data Involved: N/A
Key Insight: Sanctions were warranted because counsel failed to adequately supervise Defendant’s discovery responses. While counsel is not required to personally conduct or directly supervise a client’s discovery collection and review process, they must make a reasonable effort to ensure the client produces all response documents. It is not sufficient to only provide guidance on how to search for documents without following up on whether the guidance was followed and what steps were actually taken.
Nature of Case: Antitrust
Electronic Data Involved: Electronic Documents
Key Insight: Counsel must be involved with discovery to certify process followed. Counsel’s lack of involvement warranted sanctions in this case.
Nature of Case: Antitrust
Electronic Data Involved: Various ESI
Keywords: sanctions, certification
Key Insight: Proportionality need for records not related to the claim; Relevance; Access to records; Parties resources; Whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs it’s likely benefit
Nature of Case: Prisoner Pro Se – Unconstitutional use of excessive force by corrections officers
Electronic Data Involved: Hard copy (discipline records/ Mail logs); collection
Keywords: Compel; Sanctions; Declaration of counsel; Malicious and sadistic purpose to inflict harm; State of Mind; Veracity; narrowed requests; meet and confer;
Key Insight: encryption
Nature of Case: Conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud; Money Laundering conspiracy
Electronic Data Involved: Servers, computers, storage media, iPhone
Keywords: Search warrant; “GrayKey” program to access passcodes; Unreasonable retention of the iPhone; Motion for Return of Property; 3 part test – 1.entitled to possession, 2. property not contraband, 3. either seizure was illegal or the government’s need for the property as evidence has ended; evidentiary burden
Key Insight: defendant argued that it had no obligation to respond to timely discovery requests because the due date of the discovery was after the discovery deadline.
Nature of Case: telemarketing violation
Electronic Data Involved: requests for admission
Keywords: discovery deadline, requests for admission
Key Insight: Defendants here have not described any harm that would result from producing the guidelines and have not sought a protective order, the Court declines to find the documents so confidential that they cannot be produced
Nature of Case: bad faith and fraudulent banking
Electronic Data Involved: general discovery responses, voicemails, loan documents, loan history, and communications
Keywords: fraud, trade secrets, incomplete responses, bad faith
Key Insight: The litigation was over employment discrimination based on disability. Plaintiff brought the suit pro se. After Plaintiff failed to time respond to Defendant’s discovery requests, Plaintiff filed a Motion for Summary Judgment that was primarily based on Defendant’s failure to produce evidence of her claims a Motion for CR 11 sanctions was also filed.
Defendant based its Motions on Plaintiff’s failure to produce evidence of her purported disability, that she provided notification to her employer of the disability and/or that her employer failed to provide reasonable accommodation for her purported disability. The Magistrate Judge recommended that the Court grant Defendant’s Motion and dismiss all of Plaintiff’s claims and causes of action with prejudice. However, the Judge did not recommend imposing CR 11 sanctions against Plaintiff.
Nature of Case: Employment Discrimination, Disability Discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Surveillance Videos
Key Insight: Failure to respond to Interrogatories and Requests for Admissions
Nature of Case: American’s with Disabilities Act
Electronic Data Involved: Hard copy; Discussion logs
Keywords: Sanctions; Attorney’s fees; Bad Faith; Inherent power; Intent
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