Knotty Issues of eDiscovery
A wife was convicted of simple assault on her husband. Text messages were used in her conviction to show her state of mind. The Defendant appealed her conviction, claiming the text messages from her phone, the victim’s phone and a photo exhibit of a text message were improperly admitted on[…]
Read moreLegend says in 2005, litigation began over cell phone towers and “monopoles.” Discovery was extensive. Summary judgment motions were lost and won. Time had past. And then, what was lost was then found. When You Find the Ark of the e-Discovery Covenant A custodian’s computer was found in September 2008[…]
Read moreEvents can be announced on a social networking site with a few clicks of a keyboard. What happens when people attending an event announced on a social networking site get attacked by other event attendees? In Melton v. Boustred, the Defendant announced on MySpace he would hold a party at[…]
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In the epic legal battle over patents and floppy disk controller defects dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, the Defendants brought a motion to compel the Plaintiff, who was an employee of his own company, who did not regularly testify as an expert on the company’s behalf, to prepare[…]
Read moreA music festival known as “Field Day” sued a County for the denial to issue a permit for a concert that included First Amendment and business tort causes of action. Field Day, LLC v. County of Suffolk, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 28476 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 25, 2010). The Plaintiffs alleged that[…]
Read moreIn a business divorce, the Plaintiffs received a litigation hold notice from the Defendants. The Plaintiffs then secretly copied computer files from the Defendants’ data center in Oakland, California through their virtual private network (VPN) connection to the data center. Joseph Oat Holdings, Inc. v. RCM Digesters, Inc., 665 F. Supp.[…]
Read moreSocial networking websites can be a source of litigation and Human Resources nightmares. These sites can also blur the lines between one’s personal and professional life. In Marshall v. Mayor of Savannah a probationary female firefighter was first reprimanded and then fired for her conduct during the reprimand originating from her MySpace photos. Marshall[…]
Read moreSeger v. Ernest-Spencer Metals is the story of an industrial accident where the Plaintiff suffered serious bodily injury. In the ensuing discovery battle, the Producing Party claimed the electronically stored information was from sources that were not reasonably accessible due to undue burden. Seger v. Ernest-Spencer Metals, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS[…]
Read moreA Defendant in a gang related murder and assault case sought to introduce evidence of the victim’s sister’s MySpace page to show the victim’s violent nature toward a rival gang; a propensity for violence; and that the victim started the fight that ended in his death. People v. Williams, 2010 Cal. App.[…]
Read moreIn the race to develop a web “tablet,” former business partners Interserve, Inc. dba TechCrunch and CrunchPad, Inc. and Fusion Garage PTE, Ltd., duel over whether to expedite discovery. Interserve, Inc. v. Fusion Garage PTE, Ltd., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6395 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 7, 2010). Prior to the litigation,[…]
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