Knotty Issues of eDiscovery
A short Civil Procedure Overview: 1) A protective order must correspond to a discovery request; and 2) A motion to compel needs to have an underlying request. In an auto-recall case, the Plaintiff had produced 1.79 million pages of documents in discovery, plus an additional 84,000 pages of documents from[…]
Read moreThe Court in Radian Asset Assur., Inc. v. College of the Christian Bros. of N.M., wrestled with the issue of compelling the return of an imaged hard drive that had been produced in discovery in a lawsuit with a stipulated protective order. The Court required the hard drive returned and any[…]
Read moreThe Plaintiff in an online fraud case sought the production of personal email messages from Yahoo. Jimena v. UBS AG Bank, Inc., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95050 (E.D. Cal. Aug. 27, 2010). The allegations of the lawsuit involved a “Nigerian advance fee scheme,” where the Plaintiff claimed the Defendant, the Chief[…]
Read moreIn a Fair Labor Standards Case against Butterball, the Plaintiffs claimed the Defendants’ ESI production was incomplete. The Defendants in turn claimed that the “burden” of producing the discovery was burdensome, justifying cost shifting. Helmert, et al., v. Butterball, LLC, 2010 U.S. Dist. Lexis 60777 (May 27, 2010). While that[…]
Read moreEvery now and then, rules with teeth will leave a love bite. This is one of those cases. The Plaintiffs identified 31 documents in their initial disclosures. However, none of these were produced because of a claimed computer crash. Pinkney v. Am. Med. Response, Inc., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56465,[…]
Read moreYou should never betray the family…and one such betrayal resulted in trademark litigation over Mafia Wars. Now You are Part of the Family For those not familiar with Mafia Wars (or you spend a lot of time clicking “Ignore”), it is a game on social networking sites such as Facebook. […]
Read moreParties should be very careful when Courts start referring to a party’s views on electronically stored information as “dismissive.” More importantly, if a party boasts that they use a litigation support system on their website, don’t be surprised if the Court discusses that fact with the URL in an opinion. A Discovery Brawl In[…]
Read moreOne thing never goes out of fashion in e-Discovery: The Meet & Confer over search terms. In Ross v. Abercrombie & Fitch Co., the Plaintiff brought a motion to compel missing electronically stored information. Ross v. Abercrombie & Fitch Co., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47620 (S.D. Ohio May 14, 2010). […]
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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 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[…]
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