Knotty Issues of eDiscovery
Diapers. Perhaps the most effective tool for encouraging family planning. Now a messy diaper shipment case delivers a message on the importance of issuing a litigation hold. A Defendant brought a sanctions motion against a Plaintiff for their alleged failure to preserve evidence in a case over $3 million worth[…]
Read morePuerto Rico once again has issued a thought provoking eDiscovery opinion. It’s about time we hold a conference there. The Court found the Plaintiff had offered sufficient evidence that the Defendant had a duty to preserve the personal email accounts of its former officers. The Court explained the email accounts[…]
Read moreThe important litigation hold cases are not the ones that issue monstrous sanction awards; The important cases are the ones that demonstrate the analytical framework to understand how the law works. These are the opinions that help us represent our clients in knowing what to do when litigation is reasonably[…]
Read moreA Plaintiff was fired from her job at a grocery store that she held for 21 years for allegedly adjusting her own pay. Prior to be fired, a representative from the Defendant grocery store secretly recorded an interview with her that was used as part of the decision making process[…]
Read morePlaintiffs requested email sent to or from the Defendants on November 4, 2011 in their April 10, 2012 discovery requests. The Plaintiffs had filed the lawsuit and an emergency preliminary injunction on November 7, 2011, which was attended by Defense counsel. The Defendants claimed producing the emails was impossible, because[…]
Read moreHow do you know there is a duty to preserve? When two managing officers involved in the termination of an employee are repeatedly asked by an attorney for their electronic calendars, including a letter threatening an EEOC complaint if there was not an amicable resolution, and then followed by formal discovery[…]
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[…]
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[…]
Read moreIn a very short opinion, Magistrate Judge Facciola showed a path to putting the brakes on spoliation motions: “Assessing whether sanctions are warranted for the loss of otherwise discoverable information is a function of whether a party has been prejudiced by that loss.” Davis v. Grant Park Nursing Home, LP, 2010 U.S. Dist.[…]
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