Knotty Issues of eDiscovery
A Court recently held that it was not “impossible” to produce Gmail in native file format. The more accurate holding might have been “in a reasonably useable form.” Keaton v. Hannum, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60519, at *4-5 (S.D. Ind. Apr. 29, 2013). Here is the relevant section from the case: Zook[…]
Read moreMy grandfather grew up a plain spoken farmer in Iowa. He had a bow tie wearing attorney uncle who also knew how to sum up an issue. It is very nice to see a clearly stated order on the form of production from the Northern District of Iowa, Eastern Division[…]
Read moreThis case is my eDiscovery nightmare. Worse than a clown with snakes. Let’s review what happened. The case involved numerous allegations of discovery wrongdoing against the Plaintiff. The Defendants brought a motion for “discovery abuses intended to harass defendants, cause unnecessary delay, and needlessly increase the cost of litigation.” The[…]
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German v. Micro Elecs., iNC., is an employment case that involved discovery disputes centering on the Plaintiff’s mitigation of damages, including among other issues, the Plaintiff’s calendars and online activity, including blogging and records-keeping. The Plaintiff’s attorney claimed the Plaintiff had hardship in responding, because she could not afford to make copies,[…]
Read moreAlso Posted on frank! The Nextpoint Blog There are phrases a lawyer never wants to hear a judge say. One is your law firm “acted negligently in failing to comply with its discovery obligations.” Another is your client “acted willfully in failing to comply with its discovery obligations and assist[…]
Read moreForm of Production in eDiscovery A discussion of the form of production under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 34, plus one recent case. Rationally Organized Productions pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 34(b)(2)(E) Production requirements for documents and electronically stored information under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 34(b)(2)(E)[…]
Read moreIn a multi-party complex case, the parties agreed to the production of electronically stored information as TIFFs or JPEGs with fields of information that did not reflect the metadata of the native files. The original production fields included: beginning bates number, ending bates number, page count, CD volume name, producing[…]
Read moreA Defendant/Producing Party resisted production of email in native file after making general objections to the production format. Linnebur v. United Tel. Ass’n, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124473, 20-21 (D. Kan. Oct. 27, 2011). The Producing Party claimed that producing the email messages printed as paper was “sufficient” for the[…]
Read moreA Plaintiff produced Excel spreadsheets in TIFF format. As one could expect, the Defendant brought a motion to compel in native file format faster than you can sort a column in ascending order. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. v. Seamaster Logistics, Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 117922 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 12,[…]
Read moreThe Defendant in Quality Inv. Props. Santa Clara, LLC v. Serrano Elec., Inc., brought a motion to compel the Plaintiff to “organize, index and label” their production of electronically stored information. Quality Inv. Props. Santa Clara, LLC v. Serrano Elec., Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 41006, 1-2 (N.D. Cal. Apr.[…]
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