Case Law & Court Rules

Four years after Da Silva Moorev. Publicis Groupe., 287 F.R.D. 182 (S.D.N.Y. 2012), laid the foundation for use of predictive coding or technology assisted review (TAR) in electronic discovery, Judge Peck has issued a new opinion dealing with predictive coding. In this fraud case, he stressed that it is “inappropriate to hold TAR to a […]

In an Order dated October 15, 2015, a U.S. Magistrate Judge in the N.D. of California granted the motion of a putative class of plaintiffs requiring Facebook to produce information in response to interrogatories and a 30(b)(6) deposition notice. The plaintiffs allege that Facebook has violated the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California privacy […]

West v Houston County of Georgia et al, 5:13-cv-00338-CAR On November 2, 2015, a Georgia federal court (U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia) issued an order granting Defendant’s motion in limine to exclude all evidence and argument regarding spoliation: Plaintiff failed to show prejudice, and the Court found a danger of confusing the […]

On July 17, 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit clarified that U.S.C. 28 § 1782 requires the applicant to show that discovery seeks material “for use” in a foreign proceeding. It is not necessary for the applicant to show that the proceeding could not be started without the foreign material. […]

On May 11, 2015, the Utah District Court ruled against the policyholder and offered a narrow interpretation of the cyberinsurance policy involved in the dispute. In this case, Defendants – the policyholders – are in the business of providing processing, storage, transmission, and other handling of electronic data for their customers. They kept cyberinsurance under […]

On April 10, 2015, an Arkansas attorney filed a motion for sanctions against Defendant City of Forth Smith after receiving from Defendant a hard drive in response to a discovery request, which allegedly contained malware. According to the brief supporting the motion for sanctions, Plaintiff’s counsel sent the hard drive to an IT expert to […]

On March 27, 2015, the Supreme Court, New York County granted permission to serve a divorce summons using exclusively a private message through Facebook. In this matrimonial action, the issue before the court, by way of plaintiff-wife’s ex parte application, was whether she may serve defendant-husband with the divorce summons solely by sending it through Facebook by […]

In Blue Sky Travel & Tours, LLC v. Al Tayyar, 606 Fed. Appx. 689, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 5166 (4th Cir. Va. 2015), the court concluded that the magistrate judge applied an incorrect legal standard by requiring the defendants to preserve all documents once they were put on notice of pending litigation. Instead, the defendants […]

In a breach of action and infringement case, the Southern District of New York ordered the parties to submit “short and plain” statements as required by Fed Rule Civ. P. 8(a)(2). According to the judge, “a troubling trend toward prolixity is infecting court dockets”. “A growing number of attorneys, from solo practitioners to big law” […]

In this patent infringement case, the Southern District of Ohio ruled that “the power of a U.S. Court to require compliance with U.S. discovery obligations does not arise until and unless the Court has jurisdiction”. Among other discovery issues, the Court addressed the question of the moment in which the duty to preserve evidences arises […]