Third Party Discovery – Page 15 – Electronic Discovery Law

DeGeer v. Gillis, 2010 WL 5096563 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 8, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court ordered third-party to conduct additional searching for ESI and for counsel to meet and confer in person to determine the proper scope of the search, search terms, etc. and ordered that the costs of future discovery be split, except with respect to the third party?s search of its former CEO?s data, where that CEO had a practice of deleting email on a daily basis to avoid discovery

Nature of Case: Breach of fiduciary duty, tortious interference with business expectancy, breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, backup tapes

Chasten v. Franklin, 2010 WL 4065606 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 14, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court quashed subpoena served upon Yahoo! for the production of emails from defendant?s account where the Stored Communications Act generally prohibits such disclosure absent a specifically-enumerated exception and where subpoena in a civil action is not such an exception

Nature of Case: Claims arising from prisoner’s death

Electronic Data Involved: Emails from defendant’s Yahoo! account

Living Scriptures, Inc. v. Doe(s), 2010 WL 4687679 (D. Utah. Nov. 10, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court granted motion for expedited discovery to discover the identity of the alleged copyright infringers for the purposes of commencing litigation and for seeking a preliminary injunction noting that courts have ?routinely? allowed such discovery and that the information sought was ?transitory in nature? and necessary to initiate the action

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Does’ identities

Goshawk Dedicated, Ltd. v. Amer. Viatical Servs., LLC, 2010 WL 5250360 (N.D. Ga. Oct. 4, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Clarifying the nature of its order regarding costs, court stated that its prior order requiring plaintiff to deposit funds into the court registry sufficient to cover the third party?s anticipated costs of producing ESI specifically excluded attorney?s fees but did not preclude recovery of them, and ordered compliance with its prior order

Nature of Case: Fraud and negligence claims

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Hunsaker v. Proctor & Gamble Mfg. Co., 2010 WL 5463244 (D. Kan. Dec. 29, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Where defendant sought leave to serve a subpoena upon a public library seeking information related to plaintiff?s internet use to confirm his alleged job seeking activities, the court found the subpoena overly broad on its face and found that even a more limited subpoena would impose a burden and expense outweighed by the likely benefit; court found proposed subpoenas to internet job search sites (e.g. Monster) would result in an undue burden in light of the expansive definition of document, but that defendant would be allowed to serve the subpoenas if the list of ?definitions? was removed

Nature of Case: Violations of ADEA and ADA

Electronic Data Involved: ESI related to online job searches

Achte/Neunte Boll Kino Beteiligungs GMBH & Co. v. Does 1-4577, 736 F. Supp. 2d 212 (D.D.C. 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Noting that “courts have held that Internet subscribers do not have an expectation of privacy in their subscriber information as they already have conveyed such information to their Internet Service Providers,” court denied motion to quash subpoena seeking identifying information from relevant ISPs

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Names and contact information for ISP subscribers

LG Elecs., Inc. v. Motorola, Inc., No. 10 CV 3179, 2010 WL 3075755 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 5, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court denied motion to compel non-party to produce email communications which were in the possession of a party to the action but not subject to production because of party agreement: ?This court will not require Motorola to produce e-mail communications that Vizio and LG purposefully decided not to seek in the underlying lawsuit.?

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Govan Brown & Assoc., Ltd. v. Does 1&2, 2010 WL 3076295 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 6, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. ? 1782, court granted in part plaintiff?s application to conduct discovery in a foreign proceeding and ordered that plaintiff may serve upon Google, Inc. a subpoena seeking the IP address associated with an account from which an allegedly defamatory email was sent, but denied the application to the extent it sought to serve a subpoena for information related to an email sent from a separate account that merely read, ?Have a nice day? and which could not form the basis for a cause of action under the laws of Canda; to the extent the IP addresses for the two email accounts was the same, however, Google would be allowed to disclosure that information

CE Design Ltd. v. Cy?s Crabhouse North, Inc., 2010 WL 3327876 (N.D. Ill Aug. 23, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court vacated prior order designating contents of relevant hard drive confidential where good cause was not established by the proffered reasons for the designation; addressing defendant?s motion to disqualify plaintiff?s counsel and bar its expert for failure to timely supplement discovery by producing a relevant hard drive, the court ruled that defendant failed to offer new information that would justify such a sanction (because this issue was previously considered) where the newly-discovered documents (on the late-produced hard drive) did not change the court?s analysis as to numerosity and certification of the class and where the expert was given the opportunity to supplement his report

Nature of Case: Violation of Telephone Consumer Protection Act

In re Subpoena to Wisconsin Energy Corp., 2010 WL 715429 (E.D. Wis. Feb. 24, 2010)

Dec 01 2010

Key Insight: Court quashed non-party subpoena upon finding it unduly burdensome where non-party estimated the cost of compliance in excess of $1,000,000 and argued that the information sought was irrelevant and cumulative of information available to the plaintiff from an alternative source

Electronic Data Involved: Stochastic modeling reports

Tag:Third Party Discovery