Case Law & Court Rules

On January 7, 2010, the United States District Court, Southern District of California, reversed the decision to sanction outside attorneys for failing to produce tens of thousands of key documents. In 2008, the Court had issued a Sanctions Order against Qualcomm and its counsel for “intentionally with[holding] tens of thousands of documents that defendant [Broadcom] […]

Citing William A. Gross Construction Associates, Inc. v. American Manufacturers Mutual Insurance Co., 256 F.R.D. 134, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22903 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 19, 2009), the magistrate judge was critical of counsel’s unilateral decision on search terms for electronically stored information: “MP3tunes’ unilateral decision regarding its search reflected a failure to heed Magistrate Judge Andrew […]

Defendants’ motions to compel are granted in part and denied in part. From the opinion: “[T]he parties have been unable to agree on the appropriate scope of Dunkin’s search for emails relevant to the claims and defenses in this case. Rule 26(f) requires the parties to formulate a discovery plan which includes ‘any issues about […]

Author discusses the struggle between the disclosure requirements of the rules of discovery and the technological ability to access and produce vast quantities of electronically stored information (ESI) Referenced case law: Zubulake IV King v. American Power Conversion Corp., 2006 WL 1344817 (4th Cir. 2006) Austin v. Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, 377 S.C. 31, 659 […]

On motion of plaintiff Covad, the judge decided that plaintiff should be permitted to conduct a forensic search on defendant Revonet’s database but not – at this point — on defendant’s email servers. The judge notes that in almost all cases the requesting party argues that the email production is incomplete. If courts were to […]

Plaintiff moved to obtain the other party’s documents in native format. The judge denied the motion as untimely: “It is beyond cavil that this entire problem could have been avoided had there been an explicit agreement between the parties as to production, but as that ship has sailed, it is without question unduly burdensome to […]

From the Opinion’s Conclusion: “Electronic discovery requires cooperation between opposing counsel and transparency in all aspects of preservation and production of ESI. Moreover, where counsel are using keyword searches for retrieval of ESI, they at a minimum must carefully craft the appropriate keywords, with input from the ESI’s custodians as to the words and abbreviations […]

One of the defendants, David A. Stockman (former CEO of Collins & Aikman) challenged the SEC’s response to his request of production. “These disputes present important questions concerning the Government’s discovery obligations in civil litigation”. The opinion “addresses four distinct but related discovery disputes”: “First, the SEC failed to identify documents responsive to requests for […]

The parties filed 115 motions in less than 12 months and the magistrate judge ordered counsel to read the Sedona Cooperation Proclamation and then to agree on discovery issues or judge would appoint a special master.   The full text is available at https://thesedonaconference.org… Open pdf   Related Documents: Sedona Conference® Cooperation Proclamation

In an action concerning environmental cleanup responsibilities, the plaintiff [Consolidated] contended that the defendant’s designation of only four employees to maintain a litigation hold was inadequate. Considering the lack of precedent within the Fifth Circuit as to standards for preservation of electronic evidence and sanctions for spoliation of electronic evidence, the Court held that plaintiff […]