On July 21, 2016, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, determined that in a low-dollar-value civil rights suit, the public value of allowing the opportunity to access relevant information far outweighs the asserted cost to retrieve such data. In this employment discrimination case, the Parties disagreed over “whether […]
On July 12, 2016, the federal District Court in Delaware imposed $3,000,000 punitive sanction on Defendant due to its “high degree of fault, its bad-faith intent to deprive GN of responsive documents, and the prejudice it has caused to GN’s case — along with the difficulties it has created for GN in “getting to the […]
On June 27, 2016, the English High Court approved the use of predictive coding over the objection of one of the parties. The opposing party argued that predictive coding should not be used to carry out the disclosure review since the process would not be accurate and relevant documents could be missed. The requesting party […]
In this non-compete agreement case, plaintiffs moved for sanctions against a defendant that deleted emails supposedly containing “critical evidence.” The defendant argued that “he deleted emails on a regular basis unless there was a specific business reason to keep them”. He believed that all of the emails were backed up in a secure server. However, […]
In this breach of contract claim, Plaintiff moved for sanctions against Defendant for failing to produce emails related to the litigation. Specifically, Plaintiff asked the Court to grant a motion in limine to instruct the jurors that they may presume Defendant carried out or allowed the destruction of relevant evidence favorable to Plaintiff. Defendant argued […]
In a discrimination case (plaintiff had attempted to rent an apartment and she was allegedly refused because of her two young children), several of Plaintiff’s social media posts (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) were relevant because, in Defendant’s view, they provided evidence of Plaintiff’s “emotional state and living circumstances after the alleged discrimination”. After some of those posts disappeared, […]
In this insurance case, Defendant State Farm Fire and Casualty Company, objected to the Special Master’s discovery order compelling the answer to a set of interrogatories on ground of burdensomeness. The Western District of Missouri denied the motion to vacate. Labrier v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co ., 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61246 (W.D. […]
In New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s sanction case (“deflategate”), the Second Circuit upheld the decision of the Commissioner imposing sanctions on Brady for his involvement in a scheme to deflate footballs in the 2015 AFC. A significant issue in front of the court was whether it was proper for the Commissioner to derive the […]
On January 13, 2016, the District of Connecticut declined to compel production of all ESI documents resulting from agreed search terms. Here the parties’ counsel had agreed to a list of search terms which resulted in approximately 38,000 documents but Defendant did not produce them all, produced only 2,214 pages. Plaintiff objected that Defendant was omitting “highly […]
On January 12, 2016, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York found that manipulation of emails deserves sanction under Rule 37(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, even if the manipulation did not delete the original emails. The Court had to decide on the reach of the newly amended Rule 37(e) of the […]