Motion for Sanctions – Page 95 – Electronic Discovery Law

Ingoglia v. Barnes & Noble Coll. Booksellers, Inc., 852 N.Y.S.2d 337 (N.Y. App. Div. 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Appellate court reversed trial court?s denial of motion to dismiss complaint as sanction for spoliation, and granted motion to dismiss, where defendant’s expert found that numerous files, images, and folders, as well as some history of the plaintiff’s internet usage had been deleted between date defendant demanded inspection of plaintiff’s computer and date of inspection, and evidence showed that defendant suffered severe prejudice

Nature of Case: Defamation

Electronic Data Involved: Files on plaintiff’s home computer

Tse v. UBS Fin. Servs., Inc., 2008 WL 463719 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 19, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Plaintiff’s grossly negligent failure to produce laptop computer earlier in litigation reflected blatant disregard of her discovery obligations; court granted post-trial motion for sanctions and awarded defendant its fees and costs for: drafting pre-trial spoliation motion concerning plaintiff?s laptop; addressing plaintiff’s last-minute discovery of laptop; submissions to court regarding data retrieval issues and how defendant?s pretrial spoliation motion was affected; and drafting a new motion for sanctions based on plaintiff’s misconduct with respect to laptop and prejudice to defendant

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Laptop

APC Filtration, Inc. v. Becker, 2008 WL 548765 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 25, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Court rejected defendants’ objections to magistrate judge’s December 21, 2008 order imposing sanctions of $99,462, upheld the December 21, 2008 order in its entirety, and ordered defendants to comply with the order by March 3, 2008

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of employment contract

Electronic Data Involved: Computer

Connor v. Sun Trust Bank, 2008 WL 623027 (N.D. Ga. Mar. 5, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Because outright dismissal was too severe a sanction for spoliation in view of minimal culpability of Sun Trust and slight potential for abuse, court would give jury adverse inference instruction instead

Nature of Case: FMLA claims

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Kounelis v. Sherrer, 529 F. Supp. 2d 503 (D.N.J. 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where defendants failed to preserve DVR footage by not recording it on to a VHS tape before the footage was overwritten on the DVR hard drive, district court modified magistrate judge’s order, finding that it was an abuse of discretion to deny plaintiff’s request for adverse inference charge for defendants’ failure to preserve evidence

Nature of Case: Prisoner asserted ? 1983 action against various prison defendants

Electronic Data Involved: Digital video recording showing altercation between prisoner and prison staff

Peterson v. Tri-Country Metro. Transp. Dist. of Or., 2008 WL 723521 (D. Or. Mar. 14, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where emails and other documents stored on backup records were destroyed after complaint was filed, but reasons defendant began destroying such outdated mainframe reel-to-reel tapes at that time were (1) to reduce storage costs of up to $4,000 per year and (2) because data on tapes was no longer readable, and decision to destroy the unusable tapes not made by anyone who had anything to do with plaintiff, court concluded evidence did not support drawing any adverse inference from defendant?s intentional destruction of potentially probative evidence

Nature of Case: Claim for violation of FMLA

Electronic Data Involved: Emails stored on outdated mainframe reel-to-reel tapes

Grange Mut. Cas. Co. v. Mack, 2008 WL 744723 (6th Cir. Mar. 17, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Sixth Circuit affirmed district court’s entry of default judgment and subsequent default award of $3,430,983.69 damages plus costs and attorneys’ fees as sanction for defendant’s egregious discovery abuse; among other things, defendant failed to comply with Parties? Agreed Order regarding electronic discovery, replaced company computers despite pending litigation, refused to produce home computer even though he admitted it had been used for business purposes, refused to produce key player?s computer, and failed to turn over all electronic evidence

Nature of Case: Fraud and RICO claims

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drives, email

Autotech Techs. Ltd. P’ship v. Automationdirect.com, Inc., 2008 WL 783301 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 25, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where requesting party complained that information generated and produced in response to agreed-upon keyword search of ?Goldmine? database was inadequate and not rectified by index of customer information documents subsequently provided, and that additional information (such as dates) was needed, court ordered parties to confer about how date information could be retrieved and granted motion to compel only to the extent that requesting party?s consultant would be allowed to run his original protocol to determine if date information should have been produced in conformity with that protocol; costs to be borne by requesting party unless it appeared that date information had been wrongly withheld, in which case responding party would bear all of the costs, expenses and attorneys’ fees resulting from nonproduction of the information

Nature of Case: Trademark infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Goldmine customer relations management database

U & I Corp. v. Advanced Med. Design, Inc., 251 F.R.D. 667 (M.D. Fla. 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where plaintiff abused discovery process by, among other things, failing to produce email attachments and belatedly advising defendant and court that certain emails were unrecoverable, court imposed monetary sanctions against plaintiff and granted request for limited inspection of computer hard drives used by certain of plaintiff’s employees to be conducted by independent forensic examiner

Nature of Case: Breach of contract, account stated, open account, and unjust enrichment

Electronic Data Involved: Computer hard drives of plaintiff’s employees

Advante Int’l Corp. v. Mintel Learning Tech., 2008 WL 928332 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 4, 2008)

Dec 01 2008

Key Insight: Where court had earlier ruled that defendant could recover attorney fees and costs relating to motion to compel and forensic inspection of plaintiff?s computer servers, court denied defendant?s subsequent request for $944,902 in attorneys? fees and instead awarded $105,000 as reasonable amount of attorneys? fees incurred; court further ordered plaintiff to pay neutral computer expert only for fees directly related to forensic inspection and not for those related to defendant’s advocacy in the action

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of intellectual property

Electronic Data Involved: Computer servers

Tag:Motion for Sanctions