Case Law Alert: When a Cross-Border Discovery Letter Can Be Recommended
As our world becomes more globalized, litigation with discovery requests for information outside the borders of the United States will become more and more common. Read about Champion v. Feld Entertainment to decipher when such a request may be granted by a domestic court. Overview In this action between a motorcycle race participant and the race organizer, both parties requested that the court issue a letter of request for discovery from a third party located in Switzerland. The parties claimed that the third party “is in the possession of records relevant to... Read More
To require a producing party to take a forensic image of a data source can be a high burden for a requesting party. When considering how to preserve and collect data, logical collections will be deemed reasonable in the vast majority of scenarios, and a forensic image may only be required in a limited number of situations, as demonstrated in Aminov v. Berkshire Hathaway Guard Insurance. Why This Case Is Important To require a producing party to take a forensic image of a data source can be a high burden for... 
What are reasonable steps to preserve potentially relevant data under the FRCP? In Masterobjects v. Amazon.com Inc. (N.D. Ca. March 13, 2022), the court ruled that a data breach didn’t warrant spoliation sanctions—even if data was lost—if reasonable data security measures were taken.E-Discovery Case Overview In this case, the defendant contended that a variety of discovery violations were committed by the plaintiff, including but not limited to (1) not obeying a court issued discovery order and (2) potential spoliation. At the start of discovery, the magistrate judge ordered the plaintiff to... 
The severity of the e-discovery sanction you seek will ultimately affect the ruling by the court. Parties must understand that seeking a severe, adverse inference instruction will require that you prove “intent to deprive” evidence, which was not shown in Sapia v. Home Box Office. Overview In this Fair Labor Standards Act case about retaliation “as a result of their participation in that lawsuit, in the form of not being hired for subsequent HBO production,” the defendant motioned for spoliation sanctions against the plaintiffs under Rule 37. At the beginning of... 
With market forces demanding in-house legal departments do "more with less," legal operations and legal project management are disciplines whose time has arrived. More and more in-house departments and law firms are hiring professionals (whether legal pros or project management specialists) to ensure that projects come in on-time and on-budget. But unfortunately, not every legal department has the luxury of hiring dedicated project managers or operations specialists. Sometimes legal pros, whether paralegals or attorneys, have to make do. But mastering the basics of e-discovery project management is possible--and we're here to help... 
Parties have a duty to preserve potentially relevant data when a party knows or should know that the evidence may be relevant to future litigation. When data is stored in specific locations without backup the likelihood of inadvertent deletion is high. In Europe vs. Equinox Holdings, Inc. the defendant failed to preserve relevant evidence and had no backup, which led to spoliation sanctions. Overview: In this employee unlawful discrimination case, the plaintiff moved for spoliation sanctions against her employers, the defendants, for failing to preserve relevant data that, she alleged, supported her... 
Context and surrounding circumstances are important factors when determining if the court will see spoliation sanctions as warranted. In Emerson Creek Pottery v. Emerson Creek Events (W.D. Feb. 18, 2022), learn why one email implying that data was not correctly preserved did not ultimately lead to sanctions. Overview In this case, the plaintiff motioned for a spoliation inference against the defendant, because the plaintiff inadvertently received an email from the defendants’ counsel stating that, in the plaintiff’s interpretation, not all requested emails were produced in discovery. Leading up to trial, the defendants’...