Josh Gilliland

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

January 25, 2010 Josh Gilliland Discovery, e-Discovery, Electronically Stored Information, Email, ESI, Foreign Discovery, Form of Production, Native File, Reasonably Useable Form, Request for Production

“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[…]

Tweeting Contempt: Trademark Infringement on Twitter

January 25, 2010 Josh Gilliland e-Discovery, Trademark, Twitter

The Plaintiff, an established 15-year-old moving company, brought a lawsuit against the Defendant for trademark violations, libel, and other unfair competition causes of action. Tdc Int’l Corp. v. Burnham, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4646 ( E.D. Mich. Jan. 21, 2010). A settlement agreement was entered (after a default) requiring the Defendant to[…]

Classy Text Messages from a Collection Agency

January 20, 2010 Josh Gilliland e-Discovery, Electronically Stored Information, ESI, Text Messages

In Hartung v J.D. Byrider of Chandler, et al., 2009 U.S. Dist. Lexis 54415 (2009), the Plaintiff got behind on car payments. As one would expect, a collection agency became involved. As one would not expect, the representative from the Collection agency called T-Mobile, claimed he was Plaintiff’s father and[…]

Enforcing Injunctions Against 3rd Parties in Online Defamation

January 14, 2010 Josh Gilliland Defamation

The Plaintiffs in Blockowicz v. Ramey were victims of online defamation on social networking and other websites. The Plaintiffs were successful in getting a default judgment against the Defendants and an injunction to remove the defamatory material. Blockowicz v. Ramey, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118599 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 21, 2009).[…]

The Low Speed Chase that Gives Us Admissible Cell Phone Photo after a Warrantless Search

January 12, 2010 Josh Gilliland Criminal Procedure, Discovery, Duty to Preserve, Electronically Stored Information, ESI, Reasonable Expectation of Privacy, Spoliation, Text Messages

A police officer stopped a car driving with a flat tire, cracked windshield and its bright lights on. People v. Gorostiza, 2009 Cal. App. Unpub. Lexis 9494 at *1. The passengers might have been hoping, “There is nothing to see here.” After stopping the car with the Defendant and two passengers,[…]

No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in Abandoned CD’s

January 10, 2010 Josh Gilliland Criminal Procedure, Discovery, e-Discovery, Electronically Stored Information, ESI, Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

A criminal defendant was convicted of possession of child pornography, based on CD’s and other media he left after vacating an apartment. The Supreme Court of New Hampshire found he had no expectation of privacy in the abandoned media and that the search of the media was proper. State v.[…]

In the War of the Roses, It is Best to Change Your Email Password

January 5, 2010 Josh Gilliland e-Discovery, Eavesdropping, Electronically Stored Information, Email, ESI, Exclusion of Evidence

Divorce is ugly. It can be uglier when your estranged spouse has the password to your email account. In Gurevich v. Gurevich, 2009 NY Slip Op 29191 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2009), the estranged wife had her ex-husband’s email password since their separation in 2006. The wife accessed the husband’s email[…]

Bow Tie Law 1st Anniversary

December 30, 2009 Josh Gilliland Blogging, Discovery, e-Discovery, Electronically Stored Information, ESI, Exclusion of Evidence, Litigation Hold

December 30, 2009 marks the first anniversary of “Bow Tie Law.” 2009 was a watershed year of case law, with litigation hold opinions coming up weekly this summer; the mandatory exclusion of ESI for the failure to disclose or supplement discovery; and judges holding attorneys to a higher standard for electronically stored[…]