Knotty Issues of eDiscovery
I had the good fortune to organize a seminar on responding to electronic discovery requests for the Santa Clara County Bar Association’s Civil Practice Committee on February 27, 2013. However, this seminar was different from other eDiscovery CLE’s, because the attendees spent a full hour conducting searches for responsive ESI[…]
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[…]
Read moreIn a dispute involving claims of monopolistic violations regarding booking A-list DJ’s at nightclubs, the Defendants did not take any steps to preserve or review text messages on an iPhone for relevance that was lost. Christou v. Beatport, LLC, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9034, 36-39 (D. Colo. Jan. 23, 2013). While 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 moreMany eDiscovery attorneys associate Chicago with 1) the Blues Brothers and 2) Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan. Judge Nolan granted in part and denied in part a motion to compel in an employment dispute. The Judge found the Defendant had a duty to preserve audio recordings of calls that had been[…]
Read moreNothing says Merry Christmas like winning eDiscovery costs. One party was able to get over half the gifts on their Christmas List from the Court as taxable costs. The Defendants submitted eDiscovery costs over $40,000, which was nearly two-thirds of the Defendant’s bill of costs. A service provider made up[…]
Read moreA Defendant convicted of murder and attempted murder challenged the admission of three text messages at his trial. The Supreme Court of Arkansas found no error in admitting the text messages. The Stored Communication Act The Defendant challenged the admission of the text message content based on the Stored Communication[…]
Read moreCan a party issue a litigation hold to one of its contractual agents to preserve information by remote control? The answer is yes, yes they can. In Haskins v. First Am. Title Ins. Co., the first issue was whether the Defendant was in “possession, custody, or control” of documents held[…]
Read moreThere are judges who have a way with words when they want to make a point. One example of such judicial prose was by Magistrate Judge Gregory G. Hollows in Botell v. United States: At this juncture, the United States has purportedly been looking for documents for months, yet the[…]
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A Plaintiff brought a motion to compel “access to electronic records,” claiming the Defendants had “withheld electronically stored information” and had not produced a “chronological e-mail history of any kind.” Murray v. Coleman, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130219, 1-3 (W.D.N.Y. Sept. 12, 2012). The Defense attorney claimed that the Defendant[…]
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