Bow Tie Law

e-Discovery Civil Procedure: Three Email Messages Do Not Establish Personal Jurisdiction

Pelowski v. Pipe, 2010 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 549, 14-15 (Cal. App. 1st Dist. Jan. 26, 2010) is case where the Plaintiff’s appealed the judgment of dismissal of a Defendant based on the lack of personal jurisdiction. The Plaintiffs argued that both general and personal jurisdiction in California were properly established, because[…]

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

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,[…]

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No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in Abandoned CD’s

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.[…]

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Inked Based Confessions on MySpace

The Defendant, who was being investigated for Social Security Fraud, challenged his confession to Federal agents.  United States v. Morales, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 122110 (S.D. Ga. Dec. 17, 2009).  The tip-off that there had been Social Security Fraud?  The Defendant’s MySpace profile. The Defendant denied any wrongdoing when initially interviewed[…]

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

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[…]

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Bow Tie Law 1st Anniversary

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[…]

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