Motion to Compel – Page 68 – Electronic Discovery Law

General Elec. Co. v. Wilkins, No. 1:10-cv-00674, 2012 WL 570048 (E.D. Cal. Feb. 21, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Addressing whether GE would be required to restore, search, and produce responsive contents of hundreds of backup tapes, court found that the data on the backup tapes was not reasonably accessible because of the significant expense of restoring and searching the tapes and further found that defendant did not show good cause to compel restoration and production, particularly where defendant failed to provide any evidence of the presence of unique, responsive documents on the tapes

Nature of Case: patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: backup tapes

United States v. Comty. Health Ctr. Of Buffalo, No. 05-CV-237A(F), 2012 WL 3136485 (W.D.N.Y. Aug. 1, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Where plaintiff was able to recover potentially relevant ESI on defendants? backup tapes which had been produced to plaintiff without restriction following defendants erroneous determination that no responsive documents were contained thereon (as the result of using insufficient software to read the data) and where plaintiff therefore sought unrestricted access to the information, except for privileged documents, and for defendants to pay plaintiff?s cost to review the information, the court determined that defendants? production of the tapes waived their objections to Plaintiff?s efforts to locate responsive information but that the failure to identify potentially responsive documents was not in bad faith and that the information on the tapes was not reasonably accessible and denied Plaintiffs? motion for reimbursement for the cost of reviewing the tapes

Nature of Case: False Claims Act

Electronic Data Involved: ESI on “back-up magnetic tapes”

Vasudevan Software, Inc. v. Microstrategy, Inc., No. 11-cv-06637-RS-PSG, 2012 WL 5637611 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 15, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Concluding that without more information it could not determine the reasonableness of Plaintiff?s request that Defendant use specific search terms for specified custodians, court ordered Defendant to run a searching using each of Plaintiff?s search terms against five custodians and for the parties to then meet and confer to attempt to reach resolution of their dispute and to return to the court if such resolution could not be reached; parties utilized modified version of Federal Circuit?s Model Order on E-Discovery in Patent Cases

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Chura v. Delmar Gardens of Lenexa, Inc., No. 11-2090-CM-DJW, 2012 WL 940270 (D. Kan. Mar. 20, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Court found that ?Defendant?s failure to produce any ESI, such as emails, attachments, exhibits, and word processing documents raise[d] justifiable concerns that Defendant may have 1) failed to preserve relevant evidence, or 2) failed to conduct a reasonable search for ESI responsive to Plaintiff?s discovery requests? and thus scheduled an evidentiary hearing and ordered Defendant to be prepared to present evidence on its preservation and search efforts (specific topics identified in court?s order)

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Miscellaneous ESI

ADT Secs. Servs. Inc. v. Pinnacle Sec. LLC, No. 10 C 7467, 2012 WL 7170633 (N.D. Ill. May 11, 2012)

Dec 01 2012

Key Insight: Where defendant argued that its failure to issue a specific litigation hold was mitigated by prior imposition of a no-delete policy which would have prevented any loss of evidence, the court determined it needed additional information on the scope of the policy and ordered defendant to provide information to determine if the scope of the policy was sufficiently broad and how it was communicated to employees; where defendant acknowledged that it did not search certain individual computers because all files created were to be saved in the ?My Documents? folder which was saved to a network server, the court noted the lack of assurance that employees followed the default settings and that they did not save ESI in folders outside of ?My Documents? and thus ordered a search of particular employees? computers using Plaintiff?s key word search terms

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Diesel Mach., Inc. v. Manitowoc Crane, Inc., No. CIV 09-4087-RAL, 2011 WL 677458 (D.S.D. Feb 16, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where parties had an agreement to produce in native format which the court had approved and adopted but later agreed that defendant could produce some information in hard copy (in light of defendant?s representation that hard copy production could be more quickly accomplished prior to pending depositions), the court found the parties agreement to produce in native format was modified and declined to compel re-production citing the burden and expense (including duplication of time and expense of conducting redactions, for example)

Nature of Case: Breach of contract and claims arising from South Dakota Dealer Protection Act

Electronic Data Involved: ESI produced in hard copy

Wood v. Capital One Servs., LLC, No. 5:09-CV-1445, 2011 WL 2154279 (N.D.N.Y. Apr. 15, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff?s motion to compel additional discovery, including ?sweeping searches of ESI using suggested search terms? where, following significant analysis of the rule of proportionality (26(b)(2)(C)), the court determined that the ?minimally relevant information to be developed through the discovery? was ?far outweighed by the burden? associated with it, but left open plaintiff?s option to bear the cost of the discovery himself

Nature of Case: Violations of Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Patterson v. Turner Constr. Co., 931 N.Y.S.2d 311 (N.Y. App. Div. Oct. 27, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where lower court granted motion to compel authorization for all of plaintiff?s records on an online social networking service, appellate court reversed and remanded ?for more specific identification of plaintiff?s Facebook information that is relevant? and noted that if relevant, the content of plaintiff?s account were ?not shielded from discovery merely because plaintiff used the service?s privacy settings to restrict access?

Nature of Case: Personal Injury

Electronic Data Involved: Facebook account

Holter v. Wells Fargo & Co., 281 F.R.D. 340 (D. Minn. May 4, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Court found that relevant social media content was discoverable but declined to compel plaintiff to produce her login and password or her entire Facebook history (using the ?Download your own information? feature) and ordered plaintiff?s counsel to review plaintiff?s social media content for a period beginning in 2005 to identify information relevant to the categories identified by the court

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination, failure to accomodate

Electronic Data Involved: Social media content

E.E.O.C. v. DHL Express, No. 10 C 6139, 2011 WL 6825516 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 28, 2011)

Dec 01 2011

Key Insight: Where DHL produced ?28,000 spreadsheets worth of information? with an index containing metadata for each spreadsheet and any emails to which the spreadsheets were attached but where plaintiff nonetheless claimed that the burden of sifting through the spreadsheets was unduly onerous and sought to compel production of information to identify each spreadsheet and that defendant organize them according to request, the court noted its authority under Rule 34 to impose requirements ?different from those in the rule? and ordered defendant to identify which request each spreadsheet or group of spreadsheets was responsive to and to provide an explanation for spreadsheets not attached to an email

Electronic Data Involved: Spreadsheets

Tag:Motion to Compel