Our Insights on eDiscovery

In Bird v. Wells Fargo Bank, after the parties could not agree on the parameters and scope of discovery, California Magistrate Judge Erica P. Grosjean ordered the defendant to produce several categories of documents related to the plaintiff’s former employment, disclose its discovery plan, search terms and custodians, produce its document retention policies regarding the destruction of employee emails and produce an initial privilege log.

In Coyne v. Los Alamos National Security, LLC et. al., New Mexico Magistrate Judge Karen B. Molzen recommended that the court grant the defendants’ motion to dismiss after the plaintiff’s erased and reset her iPhone the day before it was produced for forensic examination, the “culmination of her and her husband’s willful failure to comply with their discovery obligations in this case.”

In Liguria Foods, Inc. v. Griffith Laboratories, Inc., Iowa District Judge Mark W. Bennett declined to sanction the parties for issuing boilerplate objections, but strongly warned them that the use of boilerplate objections in the future would place counsel and their clients at risk for significant sanctions.

In Ensing v. Ensing, et. al., Vice Chancellor Slights ruled for the plaintiff in the case and concluding that the defendant “has engaged in blatant violations of court orders and bad faith litigation conduct that justify serious sanctions”, ordering him to pay two-thirds of the plaintiff’s counsel’s fees and expenses and all of the plaintiff’s computer forensic expert’s fees and expenses.