Knotty Issues of eDiscovery
Many lawyers today no longer go to court with a pager on their belt, but a BlackBerry or iPhone. Partners can email directions to associates from the courthouse and associates can ping a paralegal for help at a deposition. Sending email is a normal part of the practice of law. […]
Read moreFacebook, YouTube and a whole list of other social networking sites are used every second of every day. People are Twittering their lives away online from their BlackBerries. There is no shortage of growing case law with online conduct leading to civil or criminal litigation. Here are several recent examples:[…]
Read more“Like any ordinary litigant, the Government must abide by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. It is not entitled to special consideration concerning the scope of discovery, especially when it voluntarily initiates an action.” Judge Scheindlin once again delivered a powerful opinion with SEC v Collins & Aikman Corporation 2009[…]
Read more“OCR, while perhaps not absolutely necessary to litigation, is a tool that greatly decreases the time and effort counsel must invest in searching and examining documents. Presumably, each party would perform the OCR process in a cost-effective manner to minimize their costs. Requiring the parties to incur this cost, when[…]
Read moreIn Spieker v. Cherokee, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88103 (D. Kan. Oct. 30, 2008), the parties became entangled in a dispute over who created search terms for a set of specific discovery requests. The Plaintiff had served the Defendant with specifically defined Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 34 requests[…]
Read moreThis lawsuit demonstrates why it is so important that parties frilly discuss their ESI early in the evolution of a case. Had that been done, the Defendants might not have opposed the Plaintiffs’ requests for certain metadata. Moreover, the parties might have been able to work out many, if not[…]
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The University of Kansas sued a sportswear company claiming violations of state and federal trademark laws through the unauthorized and unlicensed sale of the school’s apparel. Univ. of Kan. v. Sinks, 565 F. Supp. 2d 1216; 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23765 ( D. Kan., March 19, 2008 ). The Plaintiff[…]
Read moreThe sensitivity courts are showing to text messages and public employees’ reasonable expectation of privacy has been very impressive. This sensitivity is evident in cases such as Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Co., Inc., which found that a police officer had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his messages, due[…]
Read moreRequesting the form of production is not like telling the bag boy at the grocery store “paper please.” Moreover, you do not enter a grocery store and ask for “paper please” before you have even done any shopping. That is what happened in a recent case. In theory, parties are[…]
Read more“Watching an incompetent lawyer is like watching a clumsy ballerina.” Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola, February 4, 2009 Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola’s keynote at Legal Tech 2009 had a call to action for lawyers to have certifications and standards of competence regarding technology. In light of how everyday life[…]
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