Bow Tie Law

Circular Form of Production Objections

In a form of production battle, the producing party claimed they were denied the opportunity to object to the form of production, because the requesting party did not state a form of production.  The Court did not need to use Pi to solve this circular argument. Procedural Circles After a motion[…]

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Piercing the Work Product Doctrine: Gamesmanship with Locked PDF’s

The Plaintiffs in Mack v. HH Gregg, Inc. sued the Defendants for breach of contract over the alleged failed installation of dryers. The parties agreed the Defendants would produce a “summary of its dryer installation invoices that would include the state of the sale, date of purchase, amount paid for delivery[…]

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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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Production Madness: The Covad Story Continues with New ESI Pitfalls

Understandably, taking an electronic document such as a spreadsheet, printing it, cutting it up, and telling one’s opponent to paste it back together again, when the electronic document can be produced with a keystroke is madness in the world in which we live. Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola, Covad Communs.[…]

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Get Out the Check Book for Translating ESI into a Reasonably Usable Form in California

California Code of Civil Procedure 2031.280(e) states, in relevant part: If necessary, the responding party at the reasonable expense of the demanding party shall, through detection devices, translate any data compilations included in the demand into reasonably usable form. California Code of Civil Procedure 2031.280(e) might give anyone used to[…]

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Rock Opera Discovery of Archived ESI

In re In re Operadora DB Mex., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68078 (M.D. Fla. May 28, 2009), is the story of an international legal dispute, arbitration and the Hard Rock Café.  While all of that makes for an exciting feature act, we will rock out to the electronic discovery issues.  The[…]

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