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What is the Proper Scope When Requesting Production of Cellphones?
Cellphones are technological innovations that are in a constant state of evolution, as evidenced by the booming market and increasingly intelligent functions that they employ. Cellphones have also become hubs for personal and private information. In Yosif Bakhit, et al., v. Safety Marking, Inc., et al., (D. Conn. June 26,
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Do Overly Broad eDiscovery Requests Allow for Cost-Shifting?
In Georgia-Pacific LLC v. OfficeMax Inc., et al., (N.D. Cal. June 30, 2014), the court was tasked with deciding whether Plaintiffs’ objections to Defendants’ broad electronically stored information (ESI) requests necessitated cost-shifting. Defendants requested that Plaintiffs produce its executive emails from five custodians, including: 1. The executives’ servers, shared files,
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Can a Defendant Unilaterally Redact Info It Deems Irrelevant from a Production?
In response to the plaintiff steering committee’s discovery requests in the multidistrict litigation In re: Stryker Rejuvenate and ABGII Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation (D. Minn. June 20, 2014), Defendant produced 3,400 documents of which 1,932 were redacted. Defendant produced a privilege log, but Plaintiff contended that this redacted information
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Is ESI Changing the Doctrine of Forum Non Conveniens?
Forum non conveniens is the doctrine of a court’s discretionary power to decline jurisdiction where another court may more conveniently hear a case. The location of relevant evidence is often an important factor in this analysis. The emergence and surge of ESI, or electronically stored information, may be shaping and
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Can Defendants Produce Non-Searchable PDFs Rather than Native File Formatting?
In Dixon v. Experian Information Solutions, Inc. and Green Tree Servicing, LLC (N.D. Ind. June 25, 2014), Plaintiff alleged Defendants reported inaccurate information in his credit file about his mortgage account in violation of 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et al., the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”). Plaintiff eDiscovery requests were
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Can Plaintiffs Produce ESI in the Usual Course of Business?
Producing relevant electronically stored information (ESI) and compelling discovery are common concepts in litigation. However, some litigants are still confused by ESI productions and FRCP 34(b)(2)(E)(i). The court clarified this issue in Guild Associates, Inc. v. Bio-Energy (Washington) LLC, (S.D. Ohio June 18, 2014). The pertinent part of the case
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Can Plaintiffs Pursue eDiscovery and Joinder of Anonymous Defendants for Unlawful Downloads?
Discovery and joinder issues can be complex at times, and nowhere is that truer than in the age of eDiscovery, internet service providers (ISPs), and internet protocol addresses (IP addresses). The court had to navigate such complexities recently in AF Holdings v. Does, et al., (D.C. Cir., May 27, 2014),
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Can a Plaintiff Access All Defendant Database Metadata in eDiscovery?
In a recent blog post, we discussed metadata and defined it as the embedded stratum of data in an electronics file. The information that can be found in metadata may range who authored the document to what changes were made to it. This raises the question of whether mining an
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Does the Public’s Right of Access Affect Spoliation?
Spoliation of evidence is the intentional or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, or destroying of evidence that is relevant to a legal proceeding. The public has a presumptive right of access to judicial proceedings, but how is that right balanced when considering the possibility of future litigation and the spoliation of
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Interrogatories and Disclosures: Facilitated by eDiscovery?
In the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the court took up the question of whether eDiscovery was able to facilitate early fact disclosure, this specifically pertained to interrogatories. The court departed from common practice, in which disclosures typically occur after the close of discovery, and