Motion to Compel – Page 132 – Electronic Discovery Law

Compuware Corp. v. Moody’s Investors Servs., Inc., 2004 WL 2931401 (E.D. Mich. Dec. 15, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court denied motion to compel as to particular request for production where plaintiff offered to provide defendant a set of portable computer disks (at a cost of $40,000) that contained all the documents that plaintiff produced in separate litigation; since defendant had specifically requested these documents, court would not require plaintiff to cull documents that were responsive to another (more narrow) request

Nature of Case: Dispute over defendant’s credit rating of plaintiff

Electronic Data Involved: Computer disks

Concerned Citizens of Belle Haven v. Belle Haven Club, 223 F.R.D. 39 (D. Conn. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court granted plaintiffs’ motion to compel defendants to respond to interrogatories and requests for admissions relating to database compiled by plaintiffs that contained factual information as property address, owners, purchase dates, dates of club membership, and religious affiliation

Nature of Case: Property owners sued yacht club alleging discriminatory practices

Electronic Data Involved: Database

Convolve, Inc. v. Compaq Computer Corp., 223 F.R.D. 162 (S.D.N.Y. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court rejected plaintiff’s request for direct access to Compaq’s hard drives, servers, and databases since plaintiff had failed to show widespread destruction or withholding of relevant information by Compaq; court further rejected plaintiff’s request for sanctions for failure to preserve certain evidence

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Hard drives, servers, databases, email and electronic data

Cornell Research Found., Inc. v. Hewlett Packard Co., 223 F.R.D. 55 (N.D.N.Y. 2003)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Where defendant resisted production of technical specifications in electronic form because material had already been produced at great expense in hard copy form, magistrate ruled that defendant must allow plaintiff’s expert to view material in electronic form at defendant’s facility during regular business hours under and such further terms and conditions as the parties agree

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Technical specifications

Cumis Ins. Co. v. Diebold, Inc., 2004 WL 1126173 (E.D. Pa. May 20, 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Court ordered defendant to respond to document requests by searching its electronic storage devices and electronic data compilations; plaintiff convinced court that defendant may not have satisfied its discovery obligations by showing that responsive Diebold documents and emails had been obtained from other sources, but had yet to be produced by Diebold itself

Nature of Case: Insurance coverage

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Cummings v. Gen. Motors Corp., 365 F.3d 944 (10th Cir. 2004)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: No abuse of discretion to deny motion to compel access to GM’s databases and grant protective order to GM where plaintiffs’ proposed computer database searches were overly broad in scope, duplicative of prior requests and unduly burdensome

Nature of Case: Personal injury

Electronic Data Involved: Database

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

Dikeman v. Mary A. Stearns, P.C., 560 S.E.2d 115 (Ga. Ct. App. 2002)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: Former client’s discovery requests, including request for hard drives of lawyer’s computers that had generated documents pertaining to client, were overbroad, oppressive and annoying

Nature of Case: Fee dispute between lawyer and former client

Electronic Data Involved: Computer hard drive

Dow Chem. Co. v. Allen, 672 F.2d 1262 (7th Cir. 1982)

Dec 01 2004

Key Insight: District court’s refusal to enforce subpoena seeking non-party’s research data affirmed

Nature of Case: Herbicide cancellation proceeding

Electronic Data Involved: Research data regarding toxicity studies of third party

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

Tag:Motion to Compel