Key Insight: Responding party’s ability to choose search methods is not above rule of proportionality.
Nature of Case: Breach of Contract/Breach of Fiduciary Duty Action
Electronic Data Involved: Personal and business electronic devices
Keywords: “search criteria” “access[ability]” “uncovered evidence” “limit[ing] searches” “shielding” “Sedona”
Key Insight: Where Defendant sought to avoid production or allocate costs related to the production of allegedly inaccessible information based on the alleged cost and burdens related to processing and review but acknowledged that some of the ?raw data associated with the documents? was accessible, the court concluded that the affidavit from an attorney for the defendant?s counsel who had not ?attested to having a technical understanding of, or background in, electronically stored data? was not by itself ?enough evidence? to demonstrate that the at-issue ESI was not reasonably accessible and ordered defendant to submit additional evidence re: whether the information was stored in a ?readily usable format?
Nature of Case: Breach of contract, breach of duty of loyalty, misappropriation of trade secrets and tortious interference with a business relationship
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
Key Insight: Court overruled parties’ objections to Magistrate Judge’s order addressing scope of discovery where underlying court properly considered and applied the principle of proportionality; addressing defendant’s alleged costs of production, court reasoned in part that ?The fact that a corporation has an unwieldy record keeping system which requires it to incur heavy expenditures of time and effort to produce requested documents is an insufficient reason to prevent disclosure of otherwise discoverable information.?
Nature of Case: Products liability
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
Key Insight: Court denied motion to compel Defendant to search for documents from non-U.S. points of sale where the court found such documents would be of ?marginal relevance at best? and that the burden and expense of production outweighed the benefit, noting that such production would ?vastly expand? an already voluminous production, would entail additional translation costs, and would ?potentially require the involvement of additional entities or foreign law??; court also declined to compel Defendant to conduct searches of Account Representatives for 170 different airlines where Plaintiff failed to establish that the expanded search would reveal additional relevant information and noting that the productions of third party air carriers had not revealed any ?glaring deficiencies? in Defendant?s production
Nature of Case: Class action
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
Key Insight: Where Defendants identified 38 potential email custodians who may possess relevant ESI but proposed to load the emails of only ten custodians to save money and ?facilitate the predictive coding process? and where Plaintiff indicated that Defendant refused to informally disclose information sufficient to evaluate the importance of each custodian, the court briefly opined re: e-Discovery and the lack of any guarantee that all relevant documents will be found and then, reasoning that it had no evidence with which to weigh the likelihood that the 28 ?tangential custodians? would have relevant information but that in ?a high value? case the burden of $18,000 (the amount Defendant proposed to save) did not outweigh the potential benefit to Plaintiff of receiving the emails, declined Defendants? request to limit custodians; regarding cost-shifting, the court ordered that if the search of the 28 additional custodians returned fewer than 500 responsive documents Plaintiff would bear the cost of loading the materials but that if more than 500 were identified, Defendant would bear the costs
Nature of Case: Patent infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Court denied motion for protective order where Defendant?s ?general assertions of hardship and burden? re: the at-issue search were insufficient to justify a protective order, and explained that they had ?offered no affidavits or evidence of any kind to substantiate the general assertion of ?disruption? to their business? and had not ?shown with specificity that the proposed search would cause and undue burden and is thus improper?
Nature of Case: TCPA, FCPA
Electronic Data Involved: Allegedly burdensome search of ESI
Key Insight: No waiver of privilege resulting from inadvertent production (as a result of legal assistant?s accidental attachment of the wrong email folder when preparing initial disclosures) where steps to prevent disclosure were reasonable, including custodian?s specific identification of privileged material and trial attorney?s review of all non-privileged docs to be produced and where trial attorney immediately addressed inadvertent disclosure upon her discovery of it and return to her office
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Court denied motion for protective order seeking permission to be excused from the obligation to conduct further discovery where, although defendant claimed that prior production efforts had resulted in a less than 8% responsiveness rate, the court reasoned that Rule 26(b)(2)(B) ?measures the phrase ?not reasonably accessible? by whether it exposes the responding party to ?undue cost.? Not some cost: undue cost . . .? and where the court reasoned that Plaintiff had, in any event, shown good cause for further discovery; court?s discussion provides good analysis of issues related to 26(b)(2)(B)
Nature of Case: Wrongful termination
Electronic Data Involved: ESI from agreed upon custodians
Key Insight: Despite ?attenuated? arguments in favor of production, court found that social media content of Plaintiff?s supervisor and Defendant?s human resources representative could contain relevant information and, pursuant to a pre-existing protective order restricting disbursement of discoverable information, concluded that Plaintiff?s counsel could review the individuals’ social networking sites (SNS) content for relevant remarks; court ordered hearing to discuss procedures for searching and limiting SNS content, the costs of such a search, who should conduct the search, etc.
Nature of Case: Employment litigation
Electronic Data Involved: Social media (Facebook, MySpace)
Key Insight: Where defendant put ESI at issue by stating that plaintiff was fired, in part, for improper, personal use of the city’s computers, ESI relating to computer usage by plaintiff and certain others was relevant and city should have placed litigation hold on plaintiff’s immediate coworkers, those holding similar positions within the city, and the identified “key players”; court ordered city to bear the cost of forensic restoration
Nature of Case: Wrongful termination
Electronic Data Involved: E-mail, internet usage logs, and other ESI
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