In Formal Opinion 2015-193 the State Bar of California Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct (“California Ethics Committee” or “Committee”) discussed three of the duties applicable to attorneys involved in e-discovery: the duty of competency, the duty to supervise, and the duty of confidentiality. The Committee advised that the duty of competency required attorneys […]
On January 23, 2015, the Professional Ethics Committee of the Florida Bar issued Florida Proposed Advisory Opinion 14-1 providing guidelines for lawyers advising clients to “clean up” their social media pages not material to litigation. The Committee warns that “What constitutes an ‘unlawful’ obstruction, alteration, destruction, or concealment of evidence is a legal question, outside the scope […]
On April 29, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that the Judicial Conference Committee had approved on September 2014. The approved amendments will affect e-discovery issues (as discussed also in our previous article). Specifically, new Rule 37(e) – addressing ESI (electronically stored information) preservation and sanctions – shall provide greater […]
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 […]
Author explores the interplay between work product claims and the duty to preserve relevant ESI by analyzing Siani v. State University of New York, which discusses when the duty to preserve relevant ESI arises and the following Sanofi-Aventis v. Glenmark. The full text is available at http://www.recommind.com…
A lawyer in Canada is in the process of trying to get the information recording on sporting wearable technology entered into evidence in a personal injury case that may go to trial. The full text is available at http://www.abajournal…
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 […]
Three years after Da Silva Moore v. Publicis Groupe, Judge Peck issued a new opinion dealing with predictive coding. In this fraud case, Judge Peck stressed that it is “inappropriate to hold TAR to a higher standard than keywords or manual review. Doing so discourages parties from using TAR for fear of spending more in […]