Our Insights on eDiscovery

In Matthew Enterprise, Inc. v. Chrysler Group, LLC, California Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal denied the defendant’s motion to compel production from personal email accounts of the plaintiff’s employees because the plaintiff did not have legal control of the emails. However, he granted the defendant’s motion to compel production from the plaintiff’s customer communications database operated by a third party vendor, noting that the plaintiff did have control of that data, having already produced data from this source.

In Colyer v. City of Chicago, Illinois District Judge Edmond E. Chang granted in part the plaintiff’s post trial motion, denying the plaintiffs’ request for a directed verdict, but granting their request for a new trial after it was discovered that the defendants’ attorney had “intentionally” withheld the recording of a police dispatcher’s description of a possible suspect that was key in determining whether Chicago police officers acted with excessive force in killing a suspect in a traffic stop. The plaintiffs also were awarded their attorneys’ fees and costs expended on preparing for the first trial, conducting the trial itself, and conducting the post-trial discovery and briefing.

In Hausman v. Holland America Line-U.S.A., et al., Washington District Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein vacated a $21.5 million verdict awarded to a man injured by a closing cruise-ship door in 2011 and ordered a new trial, after the plaintiff’s former assistant alleged that he deleted emails that could hurt his case.

In Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC v. Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, the Court, determining that the defendant had spoliated data, found that the plaintiff had not demonstrated sufficient facts to warrant striking the defendant’s affirmative defenses, but opted to order an adverse inference instruction and also ordered the defendant to pay the plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees and costs in preparing the instant motion for sanctions.

As we noted yesterday, Wednesday and Tuesday, eDiscovery Daily published 89 posts related to eDiscovery case decisions and activities over the past year, covering 72 unique cases! Yesterday, we looked back at cases related to cooperation issues, social media and mobile phone discovery, technology assisted review and the first part of the cases relating to sanctions and spoliation. Today, let’s take a look back at the rest of the cases relating to sanctions and spoliation.