Knotty Issues of eDiscovery
It is not every day you see lawsuits about insurance policies from 1986 to 1987. Add Judge Paul Grimm’s powerhouse footnotes and you get a great lesson in document retention policies and litigation holds (plus a great footnote on the state of mind exception to hearsay for all the evidence[…]
Read moreIn a case where the Court called the Defendants’ disclosures troubling, the Plaintiffs sought sanctions for the failure to back-up hard drives or issue a litigation hold. There was one big problem with the Plaintiffs’ argument: they did not prove that the Defendant had a duty to preserve the email when[…]
Read moreDiapers. Perhaps the most effective tool for encouraging family planning. Now a messy diaper shipment case delivers a message on the importance of issuing a litigation hold. A Defendant brought a sanctions motion against a Plaintiff for their alleged failure to preserve evidence in a case over $3 million worth[…]
Read more2012 eDiscovery Case Law included everything from Tweets to Computer-Assisted Review. However, there was also a very basic theme that is hard to ignore: Cases should be about the merits. And for cases to be decided on the merits, attorneys need to educate themselves on electronic discovery so they know[…]
Read moreMany eDiscovery attorneys associate Chicago with 1) the Blues Brothers and 2) Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan. Judge Nolan granted in part and denied in part a motion to compel in an employment dispute. The Judge found the Defendant had a duty to preserve audio recordings of calls that had been[…]
Read moreCan a party issue a litigation hold to one of its contractual agents to preserve information by remote control? The answer is yes, yes they can. In Haskins v. First Am. Title Ins. Co., the first issue was whether the Defendant was in “possession, custody, or control” of documents held[…]
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A Plaintiff brought a motion to compel “access to electronic records,” claiming the Defendants had “withheld electronically stored information” and had not produced a “chronological e-mail history of any kind.” Murray v. Coleman, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130219, 1-3 (W.D.N.Y. Sept. 12, 2012). The Defense attorney claimed that the Defendant[…]
Read moreDefendants subject to a discovery stay brought a motion for clarification on discovery between non-parties, starting additional discovery on third parties and issuing litigation litigation-hold subpoenas to third parties. City of Lindsay v. Sociedad Quimica Y Minera De Chile S.A., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87672, 1-2 (E.D. Cal. June 22,[…]
Read moreThe Plaintiff in an employment discrimination lawsuit brought a motion for adverse inference jury instructions for the alleged destruction or suppression of email over a specific date range. The Plaintiff did not offer evidence of the email messages existence, only that he believed the email existed. Omogbehin v. Cino, 2012[…]
Read moreIn a case involving claims of copyright infringement of fabric design, the tapestry of the Plaintiff’s discovery production was challenged, including allegations the Plaintiff: Neglected to search for and produce several categories of documents; and Deleted relevant emails. The Defendants sought an order permitting a forensic examination of Plaintiff’s computer[…]
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