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Court Denies Criminal Defendant Access to Government ESI Without Watermarks
In the criminal case U.S. v. Watts, Case No. 14-40063 (S.D. Ill., February 25, 2016), Defendant filed a motion to compel discovery. Defendant, charged with killing two people in a robbery, sought production of multiple items, including 1) unredacted discovery (which the court denied); 2) electronic discovery; 3) DNA evidence
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Court Rules Against Taxing ESI Costs Related to Building and Maintaining ESI Database
In Associated Electric & Gas Insurance Services, et. al. v. BendTec, Inc., Case No. 14-1602 (D. Minn., Feb. 24, 2016), Defendant filed a motion to review the court’s denial of certain ESI costs. Plaintiffs had sued Defendant, claiming $30 million in damages due to foreign objects in Defendants’ fabricated piping.
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Former Harvard Professor Gains Access to ESI
Plaintiff in Theidon v. Harvard University, et. al., Case No. 15-10809 (D. Mass., Feb. 4, 2016), a former anthropology professor at Harvard, sued the university for sex discrimination and retaliation after she was denied tenure. During discovery, Plaintiff sought production of certain ESI in native format without deduplication, as well
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Court Orders Parties to Propose New Methods of Organizing Defendant Document Production
In Perez et. al. v. United States, et. al., Case No. 13-1417 (S.D. Cal., Jan. 25, 2016), federal government Defendants produced 7GB of documents on two DVDs. Plaintiffs, the widow and minor children of a Mexican citizen shot in the head by a border patrol agent, requested that Defendants identify to which of Plaintiffs’
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Defendants Must Meet and Confer with Plaintiffs Following Inadequate ESI Production
In Gardner et. al. v. Continental Casualty Company, Case No. 13-1918 (D. Conn., Jan. 13, 2016), Plaintiffs sued Defendant in a class action for violations of Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act. During discovery, Plaintiffs requested numerous documents, including the production of ESI. The parties disputed defense counsel’s scope of review
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Six-Week Continuance to Review 1.9 Million Documents in the ESI Production?
In the criminal case of U.S. v. Pomrenke, Case No. 15-CR-00033 (W.D. Va., December 10, 2015), the U.S. government made an enormous document and ESI production to defense counsel less than 45 days before trial. As a result, Defendant requested a continuance of over six months, as defense counsel needed
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District of Connecticut Reduces Search Terms for ESI Production in Class Action Case
Strauch et. al. v. Computer Sciences Corp., Case No. 14-956 (D. Conn., Nov. 24, 2015) is a Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) case involving a number of discovery disputes over search terms filed by both Plaintiffs and Defendant. Each party filed a Motion to Compel in addition to numerous other
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Texas Court of Appeals Upholds Order Compelling Native Format ESI Production
The Court of Appeals of Texas recently affirmed an order compelling State Farm to produce records in native format. In In re State Farm Lloyds, Case No. 13-14-00616 (Tx. App. Ct., Oct. 28, 2015), the Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the trial court in the underlying action, which
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Cross-Motions to Compel Granted and Denied in Part in Ohio
In O’Malley v. Naphcare, Inc. et. al., Case No. 12-326 (S.D. Ohio, Oct. 21, 2015), Plaintiff sued Defendant for wrongful termination, age discrimination, and defamation under Ohio law. Both parties propounded discovery requests upon the other, and both parties alleged that the other had submitted deficient responses. After several meet and confer
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Court Orders Defendants to Conduct Additional Search for Reportedly Deleted ESI
In Neonatal Product Group, Inc. v. Shields, et. al., Case No. 13-2601 (D. Kansas, Oct. 20, 2015), an action seeking a declaratory judgment regarding patent infringement, Defendants filed a third party claim against the Counterclaim Defendants and propounded discovery requests upon them. Counterclaim Defendants responded to the requests but stated that