Our Insights on eDiscovery

Read on to learn more about the latest trends and insights in the world of digital discovery.

Don’t Get “Wild” with Wildcards: eDiscovery Throwback Thursdays

A while ago, 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. Why? Let’s take a look.

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Searching for Email Addresses Can Have Lots of Permutations Too: eDiscovery Throwback Thursdays

Last week, we discussed the various permutations of names of individuals to include in your searching for a more complete result set, as well as the benefits of proximity searching (broader than a phrase search, more precise than an AND search) to search for names of individuals. Another way to identify documents associated with individuals is through their email addresses. Let’s take a look.

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Another Case Where Intent to Deprive is Put in the Hands of the Jury: eDiscovery Case Law

In Woods v. Scissons, Arizona Chief District Judge G. Murray Snow granted in part and denied in part the plaintiff’s motion for sanctions for spoliation of video footage of an arrest incident involving the plaintiff and the defendant (a police officer with the Prescott Police Department), ruling that non-party City of Prescott violated a duty to preserve evidence of the alleged incident, but that the question of intent should be submitted to the jury to determine appropriate sanctions.

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Forget CCPA. COPPA Just Cost YouTube and Google $170 Million: Cybersecurity Trends

Sure, we’ve been talking a lot the past couple of years about Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enacted in May 2018 and we’ve already seen one big fine here and another huge potential fine here. And, we’ve been talking for over a year now about the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is scheduled to take effect next January 1st. But, have we talked about “COPPA”? Not, till now. But, “COPPA” just cost YouTube and Google $170 million.

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Court Grants Spoliation Sanctions for Defendant’s Failure to Preserve Photos of Prisoner Plaintiff: eDiscovery Case Law

In Wilmoth v. Deputy Austin Murphy, Arkansas District Judge Timothy L. Brooks granted the plaintiff’s Motion for Relief Regarding Spoliation, finding that the “defendant’s conduct in this case was designed to deprive” the plaintiff the use of photographs in litigation that were purported to have shown injuries suffered by the plaintiff associated with his excessive force claim against the deputy defendant.

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What’s in a Name? Potentially, a Lot of Permutations: eDiscovery Throwback Thursdays

When looking for documents in your collection that mention key individuals, conducting a name search for those individuals isn’t always as straightforward as you might think. There are potentially a number of different ways names could be represented and if you don’t account for each one of them, you might fail to retrieve key responsive documents – OR retrieve way too many non-responsive documents. Here are some considerations for conducting name searches.

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