Our Insights on eDiscovery

In United States et al. v. Supervalu, Inc. et al., Illinois District Judge Richard H. Mills, despite an email produced by the defendants with instructions to their pharmacies to destroy evidence, denied the relators’ motion for sanctions, stating: “Upon reviewing the record, the Court is unable to conclude that Defendants acted in bad faith. If the evidence at trial shows otherwise and bad faith on the part of the Defendants is established, the Court can revisit the issue and consider one or both of the sanctions requested by the Relators or another appropriate sanction.”

In United States v. Caputo, Oregon District Judge Karin J. Immergut denied the defendant’s motion to suppress emails and evidence derived from a warrantless search of Defendant’s workplace email account, finding “any expectation of privacy in Defendant’s work email was objectively unreasonable under the military’s computer-use policies in effect at his workplace.”

In Commonwealth v. Davis, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in a 4-3 ruling, overturned a lower-court order that required a criminal suspect to turn over a 64-character password to his computer, concluding that “compelling the disclosure of a password to a computer, that is, the act of production, is testimonial” and rejecting the Commonwealth’s argument that provision of the password was a foregone conclusion, finding that “the prohibition of application of the foregone conclusion rationale to areas of compulsion of one’s mental processes would be entirely consistent with” US Supreme Court decisions.

I know it seems like we just conducted a webcast (we did, three days ago), but we already have another one coming up! 2019 was another busy year from an eDiscovery, cybersecurity and data privacy standpoint. What do you need to know about those important 2019 events? Here’s a webcast that will discuss what you need to know about important 2019 events and how they impact your eDiscovery efforts.