Key Insight: Court ordered plaintiff to produce all materials that plaintiff’s counsel furnished to plaintiff’s testifying expert, regardless of privilege or claimed work product protection, including emails, summaries, spreadsheets and draft expert reports
Nature of Case: Employer sought to enforce restrictive covenants against former employees
Electronic Data Involved: Emails, spreadsheets, draft expert reports
Key Insight: In connection with criminal defendant’s request for certain emails and correspondence, court held that the term “government” included all agencies and departments of the Executive Branch of the government and all subdivisions thereof and it was insufficient for Justice Department merely to state that certain documents were not in its possession and it was continuing to make inquiries; Justice Department ordered to immediately and by formal request in writing, demand that GSA conduct a thorough search and produce all relevant emails, including archived emails on employees’ hard drives
Nature of Case: Criminal prosecution for obstruction of justice
Electronic Data Involved: Email and archived email
Key Insight: Court ordered defendants to produce American College of Radiology reports during certain time frame, to produce all information pertaining to plaintiff contained in, or retrievable from, their computer systems, and, if requested by the United States, to make available for deposition persons with knowledge of the computer system maintained by hospital during certain time frame
Nature of Case: Medical malpractice
Electronic Data Involved: All information pertaining to plaintiff contained in, or retrievable from, defendants’ computer systems
Key Insight: Court denied motion to compel production of defendant’s hard drives so that plaintiff’s computer forensics expert could search them for deleted emails since there was no evidence that defendant had consciously or purposely deleted emails and plaintiff had only “suspicions and allegations” which did not justify the costly and burdensome search requested
Nature of Case: Age discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Deleted email
Key Insight: Where plaintiff?s affidavit in support of motion stated that emails were used routinely in the course of defendants’ business, described defendants? backup process, and asserted that he was able to run a search on Lotus Notes folders he maintained, resulting in production by him to defendants of 5,000 emails, and defendants provided little information except to state that backup tapes were routinely overwritten and that deleted emails could not be recovered, court noted that defendants? efforts to preserve evidence or lack thereof could be an issue in the case and allowed plaintiff to designate IT expert to inspect hard drives and backup media identified in discovery demands; court further directed defendants to provide access, subject to inspection protocol and confidentiality stipulation to be submitted by parties for court approval
Nature of Case: Disability discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Emails, hard drives
Key Insight: Court granted plaintiffs? motion to compel production of vehicle?s ?black box? where information sought was not available elsewhere and was necessary for expert analysis of airbag system despite defendants? arguments that data was irrelevant and unreliable and that retrieving the data would be unduly expensive because of need for technician to travel cross-country; regarding unreliability, court noted that a Daubert motion was not precluded in future
Nature of Case: Personal injury resulting from auto accident
Electronic Data Involved: Vehicle’s “black box”
Key Insight: Court denied defendant’s request for “electronic discovery of plaintiff’s attorneys’ computers” to determine whether affidavit of service of reply brief was backdated
Electronic Data Involved: Plaintiff’s counsel’s computers
Key Insight: Plaintiff’s motion to compel production of additional computer files denied where plaintiff offered no basis either for excusing delay or for deeming the files in question to be so significant as to justify reopening discovery more than five months after its close
Electronic Data Involved: Computer files
Key Insight: Court granted plaintiffs’ motion to compel production of defendant’s current computerized master payroll file and all computer print-outs for W-2 forms of defendant’s employees, given accuracy of records and inexpensiveness of production
Nature of Case: Race discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Computerized master payroll file
Key Insight: Order memorialized parties’ agreement regarding motion to compel: defendants agreed to produce all emails that exist in printed form, but would not conduct search of electronic database to retrieve emails since it would be cost prohibitive; defendant understood it would be precluded from offering evidence at trial that was not properly disclosed in discovery
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Email
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