Bow Tie Law

No Request, No Motion to Compel

The Plaintiff in ADT Sec. Servs. v. Pinancle Sec., LLC, objected to a Magistrate Judge’s denial to a motion to compel to redo the Defendant’s search for responsive ESI. The Plaintiff’s argued the Defendants failed to search individual employee computers and back-up tapes. Additionally, the Plaintiff’s highlighted a considerable disparity[…]

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eDiscovery Does Not Mean Esoteric Discovery

News Am. Mktg. In-Store Servs., is a breach of contract case involving multiple eDiscovery disputes.  According to the Plaintiff, the Defendant did the following: Destroyed relevant email evidence, including an email server; Failed to produce responsive documents in discovery due to the above failure; and Failed to run appropriate ESI searches[…]

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Arguing $2,630 is Undue Burden to Search ESI

A Defendant refused to produce ESI claiming the estimated $2,630.00 to search the data was unduly burdensome under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rules 26(b)(2)(C)(iii) and 26(b)(2)(B).  Hudson v. AIH Receivable Mgmt. Servs., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 39993 (D. Kan. Apr. 13, 2011). The Defendant was a company of 13[…]

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Undue Burden Arguments Must Be Specific, Not Speculative

Seger 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[…]

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The Form of Production Battle of the Bulge: Scanned PDF’s Not a Reasonably Useable Form

“In the court’s experience, scanned PDFs, as opposed to electronically-produced PDFs, are not reasonably usable.” Magistrate Judge Paul M. Warner In Accessdata Corp. v. Alste Techs. Gmbh, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4566 (D. Utah Jan. 21, 2010), a United States based company that produces forensic software used in e-Discovery, entered into a contract with[…]

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New Bad Idea: Claiming You Can Produce ESI as PDF’s because “Native File” is “Ambiguous”

In Cenveo Corp. v. Southern Graphic Sys., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 108623 (D. Minn. Nov. 18, 2009), the Defendant propounded the following discovery request: “Defendant requests that these documents be produced in native format with all attachments in native format.” Cenveo Corp., at *2. The Plaintiff produced all electronically stored information[…]

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Speedy Delivery: Compelling Imaging & Searching of Everything

In a contract dispute regarding a shipping vendor, the Plaintiff brought a motion to compel the collection and processing of the entire contents of Defendants’ hard drives, network drives, and user files.  Unishippers Global Logistics, LLC v. DHL Express (USA), Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 94844 (D. Utah Oct. 12,[…]

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