Third Party Discovery – Page 7 – Electronic Discovery Law

Samuel v. United Corp., No. ST-12-CV-457, 2014 WL 2608839 (V.I. Super. Ct. May 21, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Court declined to allow an adverse inference instruction as sanction for defendant’s alleged destruction of critical video footage that preceded her fall, and reiterated prior guidance from the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands: “[U]pon reasonably foreseeable notice that evidence may be relevant to discovery, it is certainly not within the discretion of a store manager [or security officer] to determine what portion of the available recorded surveillance footage is relevant to anticipated litigation, even where surveillance video does not clearly show the cause of the accident”; court commented that routinely preserving only a minute and a half of footage prior to an accident teeters on the edge of being unreasonable, and recommended preservation of at least five minutes of surveillance footage of the area prior to the accident

Nature of Case: Slip-and-fall

Electronic Data Involved: Surveillance video footage

Spears v. First Am. eAppraiseit, No. 5-08-CV-00868-RMW, 2014 WL 6901808 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 8, 2014)

Dec 01 2014

Key Insight: Non-party JPMorgan Chase Bank moved for an order compelling Plaintiffs to reimburse Chase over $450,000 in costs for producing over 334,000 pages of documents. Chase sought reimbursement under FRCP 45(d)(2)(b)(ii); Plaintiffs argued Chase could not recover costs unless the production resulted from a court order. The Court found that a court order is not required to shift costs and that costs may be shifted under Rule 45(d)(2)(B)(ii) if the requesting party is on notice that the non-party will seek reimbursement of costs. The Court ultimately denied Chase?s motion, stating ?it would be unfair?to reimburse Chase for costs?where Chase failed to inform plaintiffs it would later seek reimbursement??

Nature of Case: RESPA class action

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Mycone Dental Supply Co., Inc. v. Creative Nail Design, Inc., No. C-12-00747-RS (DMR), 2013 WL 478053 (N.D. Cal. Sep. 4, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Court denied third party’s request for return of allegedly privileged letters between third party and its patent lawyer because third party did not promptly take reasonable steps to rectify the error when it sent a clawback letter 49 days after it discovered the disclosure of at least one of the disputed documents during a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition; court rejected third party?s excuses and stated that third party ?should have recalled the document that was used in the deposition immediately after the deposition and then conducted a more thorough and timely investigation into the rest of the production after the initial clawback request?

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Nine attorney letters totaling approximately 58 pages

Lynch v. Math-U-See, Inc., No. 13cv402-GPC (WMc), 2013 WL 2444662 (S.D. Cal. June 4, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Court declined to quash subpoena based on the burden of reviewing the requested emails prior to production where, because the request sought all messages to or from particular persons, the court determined that no review of the emails was necessary (that is to say, if the email was to or from one of the identified persons, it was responsive to the subpoena and thus subject to production regardless of content); because the movant was a non-party, however, the court indicated its inclination to set a reasonable cost of production, before production was complete, to prevent the responding party from manipulating production to increase the award and to streamline production and ordered the requesting party to pay the responding non-party $420.00 ?as reasonable compensation for compliance?

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Doe v. City of San Diego, No. 12-cv-0689-MMA (DHB), 2013 WL 2338713 (S.D. Cal. May 28, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Court found plaintiff had standing to challenge city?s subpoena to Verizon Wireless seeking ?any and all records? for Plaintiff?s cellular phone, including texts, instant messages, etc. and found that Verizon was prohibited from disclosing such content by the Federal Stored Communications Act; Verizon was also prohibited from disclosing non-content records where such disclosure to a ?governmental agency? is prohibited; court noted that alternative methods for discovery were available and specifically noted the availability of a Rule 34 request for production

Nature of Case: Claims arising from sexual assault

Electronic Data Involved: Cellular phone records, including content

In re Denture Care Prods. Liab. Litig., 292 F.R.D. 120 (D.D.C. 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Court found information sought in third party subpoena was relevant, that production of documents with missing pages or emails without their attachments did not comply with Rule 45, that subpoena was not unduly burdensome, and that forensic investigation of third party?s computers was not yet warranted in spite of ?discrepancies and inconsistencies? in their production, but warned that third party could be required to bear the cost of forensic investigation of their computers if they failed to comply with court?s order to produce all responsive documents

Nature of Case: Products Liability

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Maximum Human Performance, LLC v. Sigma-Tau Healthscience LLC, No 12-cv-6526-ES-SCM, 2013 WL 4537790 (D.N.J. Aug. 27, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Upon third party?s objection to Defendant?s subpoena and its motion for cost shifting, the court found that the third party both had an interest in the litigation and an ?ability to pay all or most of the costs to comply with the subpoena? but nonetheless concluded that ?it would not bear all of the costs of compliance? and thus ordered the third party to select an e-Discovery vendor to search the key words agreed upon and ordered that Defendant shall reimburse the third party ?one third of the vendor costs to harvest the electronically stored information?

Nature of Case: Product liability

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Heitzman v. Engelstad, No. 12-cv-2274 (MJD/LIB), 2013 WL 4519403 (D. Minn. July 11, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Court quashed subpoena seeking the production of documents reasoning that Plaintiff failed to demonstrate that she could not ?otherwise obtain access to the documents requested,? and further reasoned that ?even if the documents sought might be relevant? (which was questionable), the subpoena was unduly burdensome because it sought documents and correspondence going back 7 years, when the incident at issue occurred 11 months ago, and because it commanded production of ?all? such documents and made ?no allowance? for materials protected by privilege. In quashing the subpoena, the court also noted the availability of many of the public documents sought from the state court record.

Nature of Case: False arrest and related claims

Electronic Data Involved: Non-party’s documents and emails

West Penn Allegheny Health Sys. v. UPMC, No. 2:09-cv-00480-JFC, 2013 WL 12134101 (W.D. Pa. Feb. 15, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Where a non-party resisted production of requested information arguing that it could be more easily obtained from elsewhere and that production would impose an undue burden, including an estimated $38,00 in personnel costs alone, the court reasoned that there was no rule prohibiting Plaintiff from seeking documents from a non-party that were also likely to be in Defendant?s possession and, addressing the alleged burden, rejected arguments based on the documents? lack of organization (?less than optimal recordkeeping? did not rise to the level of ?undue burden?); where the requesting party offered to pay the costs of collection and review (by outside counsel), court rejected non-party?s privacy concerns in light of the protective order and recommended that if the non-party rejected the cost sharing offer, he should be required to pay for production himself; motion to quash denied

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Smyth v. Merchants Credit Corp., No. C 11-1879RSL, 2013 WL 5200811 (W.D. Wash. Sept. 16, 2013)

Dec 01 2013

Key Insight: Court declined to compel re-production of data in native format where no form of production was requested and where the producing non-party had already produced responsive information in hard copy

Nature of Case: debt collection

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Tag:Third Party Discovery