Our Insights on eDiscovery

Read on to learn more about the latest trends and insights in the world of digital discovery.
eDiscovery Sanctions Can Happen in Police Brutality Cases Too – eDiscovery Case Law
eDiscovery Sanctions Can Happen in Police Brutality Cases Too – eDiscovery Case Law 150 150 CloudNine

As reported in the Seattle Times, Pierce County (Washington) Superior Court Judge Stephanie Arend issued a $300,000 sanction against King County for failure to produce key documents illustrating the previous troubling behavior of a sheriff deputy who tackled Christopher Sean Harris and left him permanently brain-damaged. Judge Arend also indicated that the county would be liable for attorneys’ fees and possibly compensatory damages for the Harris family. This after King County had settled with the Harris family for $10 million in January 2011 during a civil trial in King County Superior Court.

read more
EDBP.com, A Lawyer Centric Work Flow Model for eDiscovery – eDiscovery Best Practices
EDBP.com, A Lawyer Centric Work Flow Model for eDiscovery – eDiscovery Best Practices 150 150 CloudNine

Take a closer look – that’s not the EDRM model you see above. It’s the new EDBP model.
EDBP stands for Electronic Discovery Best Practices and is the brainchild of Ralph Losey, whose e-Discovery Team® blog is one of the must-read blogs (and one of the most in-depth) in the industry. Ralph is also National e-Discovery Counsel with the law firm of Jackson Lewis, LLP, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Florida College of Law teaching eDiscovery and advanced eDiscovery and has also previously been a thought leader interviewee on this blog. Other than all that, he’s not very busy.

read more
Twitter Turns Over Tweets in People v. Harris – eDiscovery Case Law
Twitter Turns Over Tweets in People v. Harris – eDiscovery Case Law 150 150 CloudNine

As reported by Reuters, Twitter has turned over Tweets and Twitter account user information for Malcolm Harris in People v. Harris, after their motion for a stay of enforcement was denied by the Appellate Division, First Department in New York and they faced a finding of contempt for not turning over the information. Twitter surrendered an “inch-high stack of paper inside a mailing envelope” to Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino, which will remain under seal while a request for a stay by Harris is heard in a higher court.

read more
Don’t Be “Duped”, Files with Different HASH Values Can Still Be the Same – eDiscovery Best Practices
Don’t Be “Duped”, Files with Different HASH Values Can Still Be the Same – eDiscovery Best Practices 150 150 CloudNine

A couple of months ago, we published a post discussing how the number of pages in each gigabyte can vary widely and, to help illustrate the concept, we took one of our blog posts and put it into several different file formats to illustrate how each file had the same content, yet was a different size. That’s not the only concept that example illustrates.

read more
Home Depot’s “Extremely Broad” Request for Social Media Posts Denied – eDiscovery Case Law
Home Depot’s “Extremely Broad” Request for Social Media Posts Denied – eDiscovery Case Law 150 150 CloudNine

In Mailhoit v. Home Depot, Magistrate Judge Suzanne Segal ruled that the three out of four of the defendant’s discovery requests failed Federal Rule 34(b)(1)(A)’s “reasonable particularity” requirement, were, therefore, not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence and were denied.

read more
Inadvertent Disclosure? Got Clawback? – eDiscovery Best Practices
Inadvertent Disclosure? Got Clawback? – eDiscovery Best Practices 150 150 CloudNine

As discovery becomes more complex and voluminous, it seems as though we’re seeing more and more cases where inadvertent disclosures of privileged documents are becoming more common. In just the past couple of months, we’ve discussed two cases on this blog, where the producing parties were forced to waive privilege of those documents when they failed the now popular five factor test to determine whether an inadvertent disclosure entitles the producing party to have the documents returned. Perhaps if they had a well-defined “clawback” agreement, the results would have been different?

read more
Plaintiffs Should Pay for Extensive Discovery Prior to Class Certification – eDiscovery Case Law
Plaintiffs Should Pay for Extensive Discovery Prior to Class Certification – eDiscovery Case Law 150 150 CloudNine

In Boeynaems v. LA Fitness International, LLC, Pennsylvania District Judge Michael Baylson held that “where (1) class certification is pending and (2) the plaintiffs have asked for very extensive discovery, compliance with which will be very extensive, that absent compelling equitable circumstances to the contrary, the plaintiffs should pay for the discovery they seek . . . . Where the burden of discovery expense is almost entirely on the defendant, principally because the plaintiffs seek class certification, then the plaintiffs should share the costs.”

read more
When is a Billion Dollars Not Enough? – eDiscovery Case Law
When is a Billion Dollars Not Enough? – eDiscovery Case Law 150 150 CloudNine

When it’s Apple v. Samsung, of course! According to the Huffington Post, Apple Inc. requested a court order for a permanent U.S. sales ban on Samsung Electronics products found to have violated its patents along with additional damages of $707 million on top of the $1.05 billion dollar verdict won by Apple last month, already one of the largest intellectual-property awards on record.

read more
Proper Wildcard Searching: Why You Should Give a Dam* – eDiscovery Best Practices
Proper Wildcard Searching: Why You Should Give a Dam* – eDiscovery Best Practices 150 150 CloudNine

When we launched eDiscoveryDaily over two years ago, I relayed a story where I provided search strategy assistance to a client that had already agreed upon several searches with opposing counsel. One search related to mining activities, so the attorney decided to use a wildcard of “min*” to retrieve variations like “mine”, “mines” and “mining”. That one search retrieved over 300,000 files with hits.

read more
Another Disclosure of Privileged Documents Fails the Five Factor Test – eDiscovery Case Law
Another Disclosure of Privileged Documents Fails the Five Factor Test – eDiscovery Case Law 150 150 CloudNine

In Inhalation Plastics, Inc. v. Medex Cardio-Pulmonary, Inc., Ohio Magistrate Judge Norah McCann King found that the defendant had waived the attorney-client privilege was waived for 347 emails inadvertently produced, because they failed all factors in the five factor test to determine whether the inadvertent disclosure entitles the producing party to the return of the documents in question.

read more