Motion for Sanctions – Page 119 – Electronic Discovery Law

Daewoo Elecs. Co. v. United States, 650 F. Supp. 1003 (Ct. Int’l Trade 1986)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Zenith’s motion to compel granted, requiring production in usable form of SAS data sets, constituting final refined forms of data used to compute final results; court criticized government’s inordinately restrictive interpretation of its discovery obligations: “To say that the data sets into which the computer tapes were transferred are not governed by an order speaking of computer tapes is as if someone had said at the dawn of the era of typewriters that typed documents are not governed by a court order speaking of ‘writings.'”

Nature of Case: Proceeding to review Dept. of Commerce’s review of antidumping duty order regarding television sets

Electronic Data Involved: Data sets

Kleiner v. Burns, 48 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 644, 2000 WL 1909470 (D. Kan. Dec. 15, 2000)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Granting motion to compel disclosure of all relevant computerized data under former Rule 26(a)(1), court observed: “As used by the advisory committee, ‘computerized data and other electronically-recorded information’ includes, but is not limited to: voice mail messages and files, back-up voice mail files, e-mail messages and files, backup e-mail files, deleted e-mails, data files, program files, backup and archival tapes, temporary files, system history files, web site information stored in textual, graphical or audio format, web site log files, cache files, cookies, and other electronically-recorded information.”

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement (posting of copyrighted photographs on web site)

Electronic Data Involved: All voice mails, email, web sites, web pages, and other relevant electronic data

Procter & Gamble Co. v. Haugen, 179 F.R.D. 622 (D. Utah 1998)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Plaintiff sanctioned $10,000 for failing to preserve or search email of certain persons; key word search to be narrowed

Nature of Case: Business sued competitors for defamation and unfair competition

Electronic Data Involved: Email, databases (scope of key word search)

Deloach v. Philip Morris Co., 206 F.R.D. 568 (M.D.N.C. 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Where defendant withheld computerized data and defense expert subsequently used data in rebuttal report, court allowed plaintiffs the opportunity to respond to defendants’ rebuttal expert report, and ruled that defendants would not be allowed opportunity to reply to plaintiffs’ response to the withheld information

Nature of Case: Antitrust

Electronic Data Involved: Computerized transaction data

Lakewood Eng’g & Mfg. Co. v. Lasko Prods., Inc., 2003 WL 1220254 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 14, 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Although plaintiff’s production of relevant email and other documents in electronic form after the close of discovery demonstrated lack of good faith effort to produce all requested discovery in timely manner, sanctions were not warranted

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email and other documents in electronic form

Markham v. Nat’l States Ins. Co., 2004 WL 3019308 (W.D. Okla. Jan. 8, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: After jury awarded plaintiffs $225,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, court considered as a post-judgment matter the issue of whether to impose sanctions against defendant for discovery abuse, allowing parties to conduct further discovery on the impact of defendant’s noncompliance and scheduling an evidentiary hearing on the issue

Nature of Case: Heirs of insured sued insurance company for breach of duty of good faith and fair dealing, false representation and deceit

Electronic Data Involved: Computerized claims information

Dziadkiewicz v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of R.I., 2004 WL 2418308 (D.R.I. Oct. 13, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Since defendant failed to timely produce database dictionary and did not produce all of its expert’s relevant email, court granted motion to compel production of expert’s email; court further granted plaintiff’s request to reconvene expert’s deposition and would allow plaintiff’s expert to review additional material produced and modify his conclusions accordingly

Nature of Case: ERISA litigation

Electronic Data Involved: Email and database dictionary

Landmark Legal Found. v. EPA, 272 F. Supp. 2d 70 (D.D.C. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: EPA violated preliminary injunction that prohibited destruction of potentially responsive documents by reformatting hard drives and erasing or overwriting backup tapes containing potentially responsive email; EPA held in civil contempt and ordered to pay plaintiff’s reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred as a result of EPA’s contumacious conduct

Nature of Case: FOIA action

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drives and email stored on backup tapes

QZO, Inc. v. Moyer, 594 S.E.2d 541(S.C. Ct. App. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: No abuse of discretion for trial court to strike defendant’s answer and enter judgment for plaintiff on issue of liability, where defendant reformatted computer’s hard drive, effectively erasing any information the computer may have contained, a day before surrendering it for court-ordered inspection

Nature of Case: Dispute between former business partners

Electronic Data Involved: Laptop

Dean v. Priceline.com, Inc., 2002 WL 34155897 (D. Conn. Sept. 10, 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court ordered defendant to produce to plaintiff information in the possession of a third party storage facility, with each side paying one-half of the charges billed by the third party for retrieving the information; court further ruled that the prevailing party would be entitled to recover from the losing party its share of the costs associated with retrieval of the information

Nature of Case: FLSA claim

Electronic Data Involved: Electronic documents

Tag:Motion for Sanctions