Motion to Compel – Page 44 – Electronic Discovery Law

Webb v. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., No. 13-1947(JRT/JJK), 2015 WL 317215 (D. Minn. Jan. 26, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

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

Wilson v. Conair, No. 1:14-cv-00894-WBS-SAB, 2015 WL 1994270 (E.D. Cal. Apr. 30, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Although ?[t]he rules do not require a party to produce ESI in the form most helpful to the opposing party[,]? the court ordered Defendant to produce additional discovery in TIFF format and to produce the metadata for all documents already produced (in PDF format)

Nature of Case: Class action

Electronic Data Involved: ESI (.xls, proprietary format)

SFP Works LLC v. Buffalo Armory LLC, No. 14-13575, 2015 WL 7294580 (E.D. Mich. Nov. 19, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where Plaintiff alleged it could not access the data produced by defendant?even with the use of specialized software provided by Defendant and the assistance of a third party vendor?and refused the options provided by defendant insisting instead that defendant must re-load the date to ensure it was not corrupted, the court noted Plaintiff?s failure to timely seek a solution to the discovery problems or to mitigate the difficulties by pursuing any of the offered remedial measures and denied the motion to compel access to the at-issue information

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI (“operational data”)

Weidenhamer v. Expedia, Inc., No. C14-1239RAJ, 2015 WL 7158212 (W.D. Wash. Nov. 13, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

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

Siriano v. Goodman Mfg. Co., L.P., No. 2:14-cv-1131, 2015 WL 8259548 (S.D. Ohio Dec. 9, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Applying the proportionality factors in Rule 26(b)(1) (including specific contemplation of Defendants? ?corporate resources? and the ?potentially very large? amount in controversy) and reasoning that the Sixth Circuit has held that ?limiting the scope of discovery is appropriate when compliance ?would prove unduly burdensome,? not merely time-consuming or expensive? and that Defendants failed to propose an alternative method of discovery ?enabling some lesser degree of production,? the court directed the parties to cooperate and indicated it would schedule a conference to discuss ?whether and to what extent discovery should proceed in phases?

Nature of Case: Putative class action re: design or manufacturing defect

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Robertson v. People Magazine, No. 14 Civ. 6759 (PAC), 2015 WL 9077111 (S.D. N.Y. Dec. 16, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court addressed motion to compel and held that requests were burdensome, disproportionate to the needs of the case, and irrelevant to Plaintiff?s claims reasoning that Plaintiff?s requests for ?nearly unlimited access to People?s editorial files? would ?extend far beyond the scope of Plaintiff?s claims and would significantly burden Defendants?

Nature of Case: Employment litigation

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Forman v. Henkin, 134 A.D.3d 529 (N.Y. App. Div. 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where trial court in personal injury case ordered production of all photos of plaintiff privately posted on Facebook prior to the accident that plaintiff intended to introduce at trial, all photos of plaintiff privately posted after the accident not involving nudity or ?romantic encounters? and authorizations for defendant to obtain records showing each time plaintiff posted a private message after the accident and the number of words in each post, the appellate court vacated those portions of the order directing production of post-accident photos not intended to be introduced at trial and authorizations related to the private messages

Nature of Case: Personal injury

Electronic Data Involved: Social media contents, Facebook

Banks v. St. Francis Health Ctr., Inc., No. 15-cv-2602-JAR-TJJ, 2015 WL 7451174 (D. Kan. Nov. 23, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Addressing Plaintiff?s Motion to Compel, court overruled Defendant?s objection to producing ESI in native format with metadata where Defendant failed to indicate in its objection the form of production it intended to use instead and did not support its objection by explaining why it could not or should not be required to produce as requested and, in fact, admitted that it had previously produced material in native format; court denied without prejudice Plaintiff?s motion to compel responses outlining Defendant?s search efforts (sometimes called “discovery on discovery”) where Plaintiff?s counsel failed to confer with Defense counsel prior to bringing the motion, as is required by the District of Kansas? ESI Guidelines

Nature of Case: Title VII: racial discrimination, retaliatory conduct

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Adesanya v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., No. 2:13-CV-5564-SDW-SCM, 2015 WL 6122080 (D.N.J. Oct. 16, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court granted motion to compel production of computer used by Plaintiff for her work with Defendant?s competitor upon concluding that its likely contents would ?arguably be relevant to claims that Plaintiff unethically competed with her employer? among other things, and ordered Plaintiff to produce the computer as it had been stored in the ordinary course of business and that the computer be provided to a third-party vendor for imaging and then returned to Plaintiff

Nature of Case: Wrongful termination, “claims that Plaintiff unethically competed with her employer”

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Shaw v. Experian Info. Sol., Inc., 2015 WL 1260552 (S.D. Cal. Mar. 18, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court granted Plaintiffs? motion to compel production of defendant database records. Defendant argued that the harm to third parties from disclosure of personal information contained in the requested data outweighed the relevance of the information to plaintiffs? claim, and that the preparation, review, and production presented an undue burden. Finding that the requested data was highly relevant to the class certification requirements, the court concluded plaintiffs? need significantly outweighed privacy concerns given the option of producing subject to protective order and Plaintiffs? agreement to accept data with personal information redacted. Nor was the court persuaded by defendant?s burden argument, finding the estimate and explanation from plaintiffs? database consultant ?more persuasive, appropriate, and accurate? than that provided by defendant – particularly in light of modifications Plaintiffs made to their request after defendant clarified how the data was stored in their systems. The court also noted that defendant?s briefing failed to allege any facts supporting its assertion that the information was more readily available from other sources.

Nature of Case: Class Action; Violation of Fair Credit Reporting Act

Electronic Data Involved: Database

Tag:Motion to Compel