Metadata – Page 10 – Electronic Discovery Law

Brinckerhoff v. Town of Paradise, 2010 WL 4806966 (E.D. Cal. Nov. 18, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Citing plaintiff?s failure to raise the issue of electronic discovery at the discovery conference, her failure to request ESI in discovery, and the lack of hardship in reviewing hard copy produced by defendants, the court generally denied plaintiff?s request to compel production of ESI in native format but, as to an evaluation of plaintiff, the court compelled the production of metadata and reasoned that the revelation of the date created and whether it was modified could be pivotal for the plaintiff

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Mintel Int?l Group, Ltd. v. Neerghen, 2010 WL 145786 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 12, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court declined to grant spoliation sanctions for the destruction of metadata resulting from defendant?s continued use of his company-issued laptop where such use was not prohibited by the temporary restraining order and was not shown to destroy relevant evidence and where there was no evidence of defendant?s bad faith

Nature of Case: Violation of Trade Secrets Act, Computer Fraud Abuse Act and terms of employment contract

Electronic Data Involved: Metadata

Irwin v. Onondaga County Res. Recovery Agency, 895 N.Y.S.2d 262 (N.Y. App. Div. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Appellate court modified amended order of the lower court and granted plaintiff?s petition to compel production of certain electronically stored photographs and the associated ?system? metadata in response to plaintiff?s FOIL request; court was careful to limit scope of holding to the present case such that the opinion did not address ?the issue concerning whether and when metadata of any nature is subject to disclosure under the CPLR? (Civil Practice Law Rules)

Nature of Case: Freedom of Information request

Electronic Data Involved: Electronically stored photographs and associated “system” metadata

Lorentz v. Sunshine Health Prods., Inc., 2010 WL 1856265 (S.D. Fla. May 10, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court granted motion for protective order where plaintiff?s request for inspection of defendants? hard drives was found ?per se overbroad and unduly burdensome when balanced against the need cited? and where plaintiff failed to explain whether a less intrusive option had been attempted, ?as per Rule 34?; despite granting the motion, court noted willingness to entertain a motion to inspect a particular hard drive if provided with a protocol for such inspection indicating a method to protect the non-responsive data

Camesi v. Univ. Pittsburgh Med. Ctr., 2010 WL 2104639 (W.D. Pa. May 24, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: In an order addressing a number of discovery concerns, court ordered the parties to meet and confer to resolve ESI disputes and ordered defendants to ?at a minimum? ensure that all files stored in electronic format were produced in a ?searchable? format and to re-produce ESI in native format absent a showing of undue hardship or expense; court ordered defendants to produce metadata and indicated willingness to excuse plaintiff?s failure to request it earlier in light of plaintiff?s ?repeated, good faith requests to meet and confer?

Nature of Case: Fair Labor Standards Act

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Aponte-Navedo v. Nalcom Chem. Co., 268 F.R.D. 31 (D.P.R. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Upon plaintiff?s first motion to compel, the court found that while information regarding defendant?s information technology department and the hardware and software used by defendant is discoverable, plaintiff?s requests were overly broad and the court could not compel responses to the interrogatories as drafted but ordered defendants to identify the computer program or software used to created or transmit the already produced documents and for defendants to produce native documents with metadata intact

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Information regarding defendant’s information technology department, ESI

Eli Lilly & Co. v. Wockhardt Ltd., 2010 WL 2605855 (S.D. Ind. June 22, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where plaintiff had produced millions of pages organized as maintained in the usual course of business, court denied defendant?s motion to compel plaintiff to precisely match the documents produced with the request to which they responded, but, citing plaintiff?s ?demonstrated ample resources?, ordered plaintiff to ?generally match up its documents with defendant?s requests by letter, chart, or some form of index? within 14 days; court declined to compel production of metadata that did not exist and ?OCR information? but ordered plaintiff to provide ?custodian information? as to those documents which lacked it

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Makowski v. SmithAmundsen LLC, 2010 WL 3172236 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 11, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where defendants were unable to produce an electronic version of an interview summary available in hard copy and where the creator of the summary testified that after printing the summary, she could not find the electronic version on her computer and hypothesized that perhaps it had inadvertently been saved in a temporary file, the court could not find that the duty to preserve had been willfully breached or that defendant had been prejudiced by the loss, particularly where a second summary of the same interview was produced and where the person who was interviewed was available for deposition and trial, and denied plaintiff?s motion for sanctions

Nature of Case: Violations of Title VII and the Family and Medical Leave Act

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic version of document produced only in hard copy

Chevron Corp. v. Stratus Consulting, Inc., 2010 WL 3489922 (D. Colo. Aug. 31, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court granted petitioner?s motion to compel production of subpoenaed information in native format, including re-production of materials already produced in .pdf format, where, despite respondent?s objections, the court determined the underlying metadata could be probative, but ordered petitioner to bear the cost where the subpoena had been ?less than clear? regarding the format of production and where respondents? claims of undue burden ?carrie[d] some legitimacy?; court?s opinion acknowledged respondent?s argument regarding the inability to Bates stamp native documents and ordered that the documents be Bates-stamped ?only as technologically possible?

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Pitney Bowes Gov. Solutions, Inc. v. United States, 94 Fed. Cl. 1 (Fed. Cl. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where, despite the destruction of relevant ESI, defendant was able to restore the relevant documents from backup tapes and produce them, but where the metadata was different such that the author of the documents was listed as one person rather than the many who had actually authored them, the court accepted the explanation that the author reflected in restored documents had received each document as an email attachment and saved those documents to her hard drive, thus changing the metadata, and further found that plaintiff made no showing that the documents were otherwise modified and denied the motion for sanctions

Nature of Case: Bid Protest

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Tag:Metadata