When Parties Fail to Cooperate During Discovery, Everybody Loses
It’s no secret that courts prefer settlements over protracted litigation. Because the court system encounters an incredibly heavy case load, parties are heavily encouraged to resolve disputes amongst...
View ArticleTwitter Turnover: If you tweet in the woods, and no one hears it, does it...
If you tweet, it’s the same as though you screamed your message out of the window. On October 11, 2011, the defendant in this case was charged with Disorderly Conduct for allegedly marching on the...
View ArticleeDiscovery Etiquette: Who Should Pick Up the Check?
Electronic Discovery requests can pose substantial financial burdens for the parties to a lawsuit. According to the New York County Supreme Court, these costs are the responsibility of the party who...
View ArticleWhen Are Trade Secrets Not Trade Secrets?
When are trade secrets no longer allowed to be kept secret? According to the Southern District of New York, when you try to obtain a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order in federal...
View ArticleNew York Court Adopts Federal Standard Regarding Initial Costs of ESI
In February 2012, the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, held that the cost of finding of producing electronically stored information (ESI) is placed initially on the...
View ArticleHath No Fury Like A Scorned Employer: Using Discovery As A Weapon
Lawyers love playing “the game”: the passive-aggressive chess match of paperwork requests and time-stall battles with the opposing attorney. At first glance, botched production can look like sloppy...
View ArticleBlocking Statutes Watch Out – U.S. Courts Coming Through…
Just because your adversary makes a request for documents that would violate German law, it doesn’t mean you are not required to do so. In AccessData Corp., the plaintiff made several discovery...
View ArticlePrivileged Communications Have to Actually be Privileged to be Immune
The brief order by the First Department Appellate Division doesn’t delve into much background (or really any background at all) as to the facts of the present case, however, it does shed some light on...
View ArticleWhen deactivating your Facebook account becomes the intentional destruction...
Deactivating your Facebook account and passively allowing it to be permanently deleted can be considered the intentional destruction of evidence. The Plaintiff in Gatto is now facing a potentially...
View ArticleDefault Judgment Granted, Monetary Sanctions Imposed Against Plaintiff Tech...
Plaintiff’s counsel tried to distance the company and themselves from their retained consultant in an unsuccessful attempt to escape sanctions for multiple instances of misconduct. Illinois District...
View ArticleThe Stored Communications Act Protects Public Posts to Social Media Sites
The case arose from an oral licensing agreement between artist Buckley Crispin, Plaintiff, and Christian Audigier and companies (famously associated with the clothing line Ed Hardy), Defendants....
View ArticleWhen eDiscovery Exists in Only One Format, Requesting Parties Must Make Do
Some types of electronically stored information (ESI) can be viewed in formats so ubiquitous that instructions are unnecessary and it can be assumed that everyone has the software necessary to access...
View ArticleStriking a Balance: Cost Shifting in E-Discovery Cases
Electronic discovery and paper discovery are often treated by courts as the same thing, but there are significant differences between the two that require two sets of rules. Paper discovery involves...
View ArticleIncompatible Software Leads to Cost-Shifting in eDiscovery
The issue in this case involves a dispute arising out of the Plaintiff’s failure to produce information, namely bookkeeping data, in a readable format. After the Defendant requested the Plaintiff’s...
View ArticleProtecting Confidential Information Vital to Keep Civil Discovery Functioning
Litigation involving minors and schools can always be a difficult situation for all parties, and issues of confidentiality will often arise. In order to help the judicial system function effectively,...
View ArticlePsychic Readings Are Not Beyond the Court’s Reach
What Randi Glazer’s psychics didn’t foresee was the compelled production of their predications. If they could, maybe they would have told her to keep them out of her employee inbox. In Glazer v....
View ArticleWho Ya Gonna Call… Databusters!
Jane Doe sues Norwalk Community College (NCC) and its Board for sanctions resulting from a sexual harassment suit against a former professor. Doe moved to compel the inspection of certain electronic...
View ArticleJudge Posner – The Peacemaker
In 2011, Heraeus Kulzer, a German company, sued Biomet, Inc. in German court for theft of trade secrets. Heraeus claimed that it provided intimate trade secrets and confidential information to Merck,...
View ArticleeDiscovery Decreases Plaintiff’s Burden
From a layman’s standpoint, suing a corporation can seem grueling. Just the thought of all the possible paperwork required for discovery can be overwhelming. However, the continued use of electronic...
View ArticleFiling a Personal Injury Claim? Get Ready to Produce Your Private Facebook...
The scope of relevant discovery for social networking sites (SNS) is like Goldilocks – it can’t be too broad or too narrow, it has to be just right for the courts to allow it. This is especially true...
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