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Electronic Discovery

Court Denies Defendant’s Motion to Overrule Plaintiff’s Objections to Discovery Requests

Cooperation in Predictive Coding Exercise Fails to Avoid Disputed Production: eDiscovery Case Law
 In Dynamo Holdings v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Docket Nos. 2685-11, 8393-12 (U.S. Tax Ct. July 13, 2016), Texas Tax Court Judge Ronald Buch ruled denied the respondent’s Motion to Compel Production of Documents Containing Certain Terms, finding that there is “no question that petitioners satisfied our Rules when they responded using predictive coding”.

Case Background

In this case involving various transfers from one entity to a related entity where the respondent determined that the transfers were disguised gifts to the petitioner’s owners and the petitioners asserted that the transfers were loans, the parties previously disputed the use of predictive coding for this case and, in September 2014 (covered by us here), Judge Buch ruled that “[p]etitioners may use predictive coding in responding to respondent’s discovery request. If, after reviewing the results, respondent believes that the response to the discovery request is incomplete, he may file a motion to compel at that time.”

At the outset of this ruling, Judge Buch noted that “[t]he parties are to be commended for working together to develop a predictive coding protocol from which they worked”.  As indicated by the parties’ joint status reports, the parties agreed to and followed a framework for producing the electronically stored information (ESI) using predictive coding: (1) restoring and processing backup tapes, (2) selecting and reviewing seed sets, (3) establishing and applying the predictive coding algorithm; and (4) reviewing and returning the production set

While the petitioners were restoring the first backup tape, the respondent requested that the petitioners conduct a Boolean search and provided petitioners with a list of 76 search terms for the petitioners to run against the processed data.  That search yielded over 406,000 documents, from which two 1,000 document samples were conducted and provided to the respondent for review.  After the model was run against the second 1,000 documents, the petitioners’ technical professionals reported that the model was not performing well, so the parties agreed that the petitioners would select an additional 1,000 documents that the algorithm had ranked high for likely relevancy and the respondent reviewed them as well.  The respondent declined to review one more validation sample of 1,000 documents when the petitioner’s technical professionals explained that the additional review would be unlikely to improve the model.

Ultimately, using the respondent’s selected recall rate of 95 percent, the petitioners ran the algorithm against the 406,000 documents to identify documents to produce (followed by a second algorithm to identify privileged materials) and, between January and March 2016, the petitioners delivered a production set of approximately 180,000 total documents on a portable device for the respondent to review and included a relevancy score for each document – ultimately, the respondent only found 5,796 to be responsive (barely over 3% of the production) and returned the rest.

On June 17, 2016, the respondent filed a motion to compel production of the documents identified in the Boolean search that were not produced in the production set (1,353 of 1,645 documents containing those terms they claimed were not produced), asserting that those documents were “highly likely to be relevant.”  Ten days later, the petitioner filed an objection to the respondent’s motion to compel, challenging the respondent’s calculations of documents that were incorrectly produced by noting that only 1,360 of documents actually contained those terms, that 440 of them had actually been produced and that many of the remaining documents predated or postdated the relevant time period.  They also argued that the documents were selected by the predictive coding algorithm based on selection criteria set by the respondent.

Judge’s Ruling

Judge Buch noted that “[r]espondent’s motion is predicated on two myths”: 1) the myth that “manual review by humans of large amounts of information is as accurate and complete as possible – perhaps even perfect – and constitutes the gold standard by which all searches should be measured”, and 2) the myth of a perfect response to the respondent’s discovery request, which the Tax Court Rules don’t require.  Judge Buch cited Rio Tinto where Judge Andrew Peck stated:

“One point must be stressed – it is inappropriate to hold TAR [technology assisted review] to a higher standard than keywords or manual review.  Doing so discourages parties from using TAR for fear of spending more in motion practice than the savings from using from using TAR for review.”

Stating that “[t]here is no question that petitioners satisfied our Rules when they responded using predictive coding”, Judge Buch denied the respondent’s Motion to Compel Production of Documents Containing Certain Terms.

So, what do you think?  If parties agree to the predictive coding process, should they accept the results no matter what?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Even in Baseball, Hacking Can Get You Prison Time: eDiscovery Trends
 Just because it’s “just a game” doesn’t mean you can’t go to prison for computer hacking…


Last June, we covered this story about the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the most successful teams in baseball over the past two decades, as under investigation by the F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors, accused of hacking into an internal network of my hometown team, the Houston Astros, to steal internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports, among other competitive information.  As a result of the investigation, the former scouting director of the Cardinals, Christopher Correa (not to be confused with Astros star shortstop Carlos Correa), was sentenced to nearly four years in prison Monday for hacking the Astros’ player-personnel database and email system.

Correa had pled guilty in January to five counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer from 2013 to at least 2014, the same year he was promoted to director of baseball development in St. Louis. He was fired last summer and now faces 46 months behind bars and a court order to pay $279,038 in restitution.

The data breach was reported in June 2014 when Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow told reporters the team had been the victim of hackers who accessed servers and proceeded to publish online months of internal trade talks. Luhnow had previously worked for the Cardinals.  The FBI said Correa was able to gain access using a password similar to that used by a Cardinals employee who “had to turn over his Cardinals-owned laptop to Correa along with the laptop’s password” when he was leaving for a job with the Astros in 2011. The employee was not identified, though Luhnow left St. Louis for Houston in December of that year to become general manager of the Astros.

So, not only can accessing your former company’s data with a shared password make you a hacker, using a variation of a departed employee’s old password to access data at his new employer can also make you a hacker.  You could even face jail time for deleting employer files before leaving your job.  A few more decisions like this might actually cut down on cybersecurity breaches within organizations.  Then again, it might not.

So, what do you think?  Do you expect to see more breaches like this between competitors in various industries?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Here are the Results of the Inaugural Best of Corporate Counsel Survey: eDiscovery Trends

Hard to believe that this is their inaugural survey of the top providers to the in-house corporate legal marketplace, but Corporate Counsel just released its first Best of Corporate Counsel results and those results include rankings in a few eDiscovery categories.

As they note in their introductory letter, Best of Corporate Counsel highlights the businesses and individuals who garnered the most votes from members of the in-house legal community from law-firm performance, data management, legal research to technology, finance, outsource services and more.  The Corporate Counsel community was notified of the ballot through direct emails, print advertising, social media updates and online advertisements across American Lawyer Media (ALM)’s network of websites.  The ballot consisted of 55 categories and over 1,500 votes were cast in this initial survey.

The survey results start here and span eight pages with advertisements interspersed throughout (winners like to gloat, after all).  Here are the results of some of the notable eDiscovery categories:

Best of Online Review Platform

  1. Relativity by kCura
  2. CloudNine Discovery
  3. Kroll Ontrack

Shameless plug warning: Did you think I was going to start anywhere else?  :o)  Seriously though, CloudNine is pleased and proud to have been voted #2 behind Relativity (who is a bit more well-known than we are) and we want to thank those who voted for us.  We’re the Avis of the eDiscovery online review platforms – we try harder.  Think they’ll let us borrow that slogan?  Anyway, here are some other category results…

Best of Legal Hold Solution

  1. Thomson Reuters Concourse Legal Hold
  2. Mitratech Legal Hold
  3. Legal Hold Pro by Zapproved

Best of Managed Document Review Service

  1. Inspired Review
  2. RVM
  3. FTI Technology

Best of Managed eDiscovery & Litigation Support Services

  1. Inspired Review
  2. RVM
  3. Discovia

Best of End-To-End eDiscovery Provider

  1. RVM
  2. Discovia
  3. Epiq Systems

Best of Technology Assisted Review eDiscovery Solution

  1. Inspired Review
  2. RVM
  3. Discovia

Best of Data & Technology Management eDiscovery Provider

  1. Epiq Systems
  2. Consilio / Huron Legal
  3. RVM

Best of Data Recovery Solution Provider

  1. Discovia
  2. Kroll Ontrack
  3. Consilio / Huron Legal

So, what do you think?  Do you agree with the selections or do you have a different favorite provider in any of these categories?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Court Rules that Judges Can Consider Predictive Algorithms in Sentencing: eDiscovery Trends

Score one for big data analytics.  According to The Wall Street Journal Law Blog, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled last week that sentencing judges may take into account algorithms that score offenders based on their risk of committing future crimes.

As noted in Court: Judges Can Consider Predictive Algorithms in Sentencing (written by Joe Palazzolo), the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, upheld a six-year prison sentence for 34-year-old Eric Loomis, who was deemed a high risk of re-offending by a popular tool known as COMPAS (Correctional Offender  Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions), a 137-question test that covers criminal and parole history, age, employment status, social life, education level, community ties, drug use and beliefs.

“Ultimately, we conclude that if used properly, observing the limitations and cautions set forth herein, a circuit court’s consideration of a COMPAS risk assessment at sentencing does not violate a defendant’s right to due process,” wrote Justice Ann Walsh Bradley of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

During his appeal in April after pleading guilty to eluding an officer and no contest to operating a vehicle without the owner’s consent, Loomis challenged the use of the test’s score, saying it violated his right to due process of law because he was unable to review the algorithm and raise questions about it.  Loomis, a registered sex offender, had been then sentenced to six years in prison because his score on the COMPAS test noted he was a “high risk” to the community.

As part of the ruling, Justice Bradley ordered state officials to inform the sentencing court about several cautions regarding a COMPAS risk assessment’s accuracy: (1) the proprietary nature of COMPAS has been invoked to prevent disclosure of information relating to how factors are weighed or how risk scores are to be determined; (2) risk assessment compares defendants to a national sample, but no crossvalidation study for a Wisconsin population has yet been completed; (3) some studies of COMPAS risk assessment scores have raised questions about whether they disproportionately classify minority offenders as having a higher risk of recidivism; and (4) risk assessment tools must be constantly monitored and re-normed for accuracy due to changing populations and subpopulations.

And, the court also had guidance for how the scores should be used, as well:

“Although it cannot be determinative, a sentencing court may use a COMPAS risk assessment as a relevant factor for such matters as: (1) diverting low-risk prison-bound offenders to a non-prison alternative; (2) assessing whether an offender can be supervised safely and effectively in the community; and (3) imposing terms and conditions of probation, supervision, and responses to violations.”

So, while the sentencing judge may take COMPAS scores into consideration, they can’t use it to justify making a sentence longer or shorter, or serve as the sole factor in determining whether someone should be sentenced to prison or released into the community.  As Judge Bradley wrote in her opinion, “Using a risk assessment tool to determine the length and severity of a sentence is a poor fit”.

So, what do you think?  Should algorithms that have a significant effect on people’s lives be secret?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Inaugural Best of Corporate Counsel Survey Highlights CloudNine

Extract of survey from Corporate Counsel

The inaugural Best of Corporate Counsel reader ranking survey of top providers to the in-house corporate legal marketplace was published in the July edition of Corporate Counsel Magazine. Voting for this inaugural survey was conducted via online ballot and limited to those working within in-house corporate legal and compliance departments. The ballot consisted of 55 categories and more than 1,500 votes were cast in this inaugural run.

CloudNine was highlighted in the 2016 reading ranking survey as the second leading online review platform behind Relativity from kCura.

Source: Corporate Counsel Magazine

For access to the complete survey, click here.

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Appeals Court Upholds Defendant’s Request for eDiscovery Cost Reimbursement: eDiscovery Case Law

In Deere & Co. v. Duroc, LLC et. al., No. 2014-1697 (Fed. Cir., May 26, 2016), after the defendants conceded much of the storage and hosting costs they had claimed, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court ruling to uphold cost taxation requested by the defendants, including eDiscovery costs.

Case Background

In this case where the plaintiff sued the defendants for patent infringement, the court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants and ordered the Clerk of Court to enter judgment for both Defendants, with costs to be assessed against the plaintiff.  The defendants submitted their bills of costs, and the Clerk’s assessment was reviewed and affirmed by the district court, which stated that it had “carefully studied the parties’ submissions and held a telephonic hearing solely to address these costs issues”.

The plaintiff appealed the summary judgment of non-infringement, which was vacated on appeal and remanded for trial.  After trial, the jury found that the plaintiff’s patent was not infringed, and the district court entered judgment in favor of the defendants, who again submitted their bills of taxable costs.  The plaintiff objected to various requested costs as excessive, beyond the authority of the district court to tax, or lacking the required documentation.  The district court reviewed the assessments and upheld most of the costs, approving the taxation as “supported by 28 U.S.C. § 1920, legal authorities cited in the Defendants’ briefs, and in view of the length and complexity of the fourteen-day long patent trial.”

The plaintiff appealed, challenging the assessment of costs in three areas: (1) costs related to document copying, (2) costs related to eDiscovery, and (3) costs related to trial exemplifications.  With regard to eDiscovery, various aspects of the eDiscovery process were governed by a negotiated ESI Agreement that required various eDiscovery actions to be undertaken. The ESI Agreement required that all documents be produced electronically in a database format, product numbered, searchable, with OCR and metadata extracted and identified, and produced on suitable storage media.

Appellate Court’s Ruling

With regard to the eDiscovery costs, the defendants conceded much of the storage and hosting costs they had claimed on appeal, leaving the appellate court to address only the issue of whether e-discovery costs are taxable as a matter of law.  The appeals court noted that “The district court held that when the costs of complying with the agreement are within the obligations of the Agreement and reasonably incurred in complying with the Agreement, they are recoverable” and those costs “are within the scope of § 1920”.  As a result, the appeals court concluded that the district court acted within its discretion and upheld the remaining eDiscovery costs claimed, as well as the other costs related to document copying and trial exemplifications.

So, what do you think?  Will ESI agreements make it easier to recover eDiscovery costs?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Market Guide for E-Discovery Solutions: Mention of CloudNine By Gartner

Extract of report from Gartner Research

Authored by industry analyst Jie Zhang, and available for purchase from the Gartner website ($1,295.00), the new Market Guide for E-Discovery Solutions report provides information technology leaders and legal counsel considerations for the evaluation and selection of eDiscovery solutions. One of the areas highlighted in the report was eDiscovery Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

Considerations for eDiscovery SaaS included:

  • Cloud e-discovery solutions are gaining momentum in the market with their ease of use, and more competitive and straightforward pricing structures.
  • Select e-discovery SaaS solutions strategically. Depending on the maturity of in-house e- discovery processes and teams, SaaS solutions may not be suitable for all matters.
  • When selecting the SaaS provider, it is important to understand their data center locations, among other things.

CloudNine was mentioned as a representative software provider in the Market Guide for E-Discovery Solutions. Key elements of CloudNine’s offering include:

  • SaaS Deployment Model
  • Processing, Analytics, Review, and Production
  • Private Cloud
  • Self-Service
  • Task and Process Automation (Fully Integrated)
  • Full Suite of Professional Services

Source: Gartner

For access to the complete report, click here.

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New Roles for George Socha and Randi Mayes and First Masters Conference Report: eDiscovery Trends

Changes are in store for a couple of legal technology icons.  And, here are some of the things you missed at this week’s Masters Conference.

George Socha Has a New Role

ACEDS reported yesterday that George Socha, co-founder of EDRM, announced yesterday at the Summer Social for Women in eDiscovery in Minneapolis that he has joined BDO as Managing Director for Thought Leadership. ACEDS reports that George says he will be continuing his work with EDRM and will continue to be a presence at industry conferences, on webinars, and publishing new eDiscovery materials.  Having participated in EDRM since 2006 (and as an Education partner via eDiscovery Daily), I can’t imagine EDRM without George, so that’s good to hear.

ACEDS reported that George says he still has to figure out all of his new responsibilities within the company but will be actively involved in business development as well as working on specific matters, including providing expert testimony. “One of the things that impressed me about BDO was their concern with making sure I understood and appreciated the importance they place on collaborative work and teamwork,” George said.

Randi Mayes Stepping Down as Executive Director of ILTA

ACEDS also reported ILTA’s announcement that Randi Mayes, known as the “Mother of ILTA” and the organization’s long-serving executive director, will step down from her position in 2017. Randi has been with the organization since its inception, first as a volunteer leader and eventually as its executive director.  I remember coordinating with her as a vendor way back in 1999-2000, when ILTA was known as LawNet and the conference every year was located in Palm Springs at the LaQuinta resort.  The organization and the conference have both come a long way and she has been a big part of that.

The organization’s Board of Directors says it has formed a search committee to oversee the process of selecting a new executive director.

Notes from the Masters Conference, courtesy of Bill Dimm

We had a terrific day at The Masters Conference New York City 2016 IoT, Cybersecurity and Social Media Conference on Monday and I want to thank the panelists for the session that I moderated (Faster, Cheaper, Better: How Automation is Revolutionizing eDiscovery).  Bill Dimm, CEO of Hot Neuron, Bill Speros, Evidence Consulting Attorney with Speros & Associates, LLC and Hon. Ronald J. Hedges, Senior Counsel with Dentons all provided great insight into considerations and potential limitations of technology assisted review from a technician, consultant and judicial perspective.  They did a great job of spotlighting several instances where the hype of TAR may not meet the current state of TAR technology and acceptance.

When we were not presenting, we were able to attend other sessions throughout the day.  Most of the time, there were two sessions going at the same time, so you could only attend one of them.  I have some observations that I plan to share from one or two of the sessions next week.  Bill Dimm, on his Clustify blog, has already provided some observations here from the sessions that he attended that are worth checking out as well.

So, what do you think?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

EU-US Privacy Shield Formally Adopted by the European Commission: eDiscovery Trends

As we discussed back in February, the EU-US Privacy Shield, an important new agreement governing the transfer of data between Europe and the United States, was announced on February 2.  Within the same month, the European Commission released details on the new trans-Atlantic data transfer arrangement.  Now, the European Commission has formally adopted the new agreement, only nine months after the old “Safe Harbor” agreement was struck down.

As discussed in The Verge (EU-US Privacy Shield agreement goes into effect, written by Amar Toor), the new data transfer pact went into effect two days ago (July 12), and US companies will be able to certify their compliance as of August 1st.

EU member states formally signed on to the agreement last week, but The Guardian reported that Austria, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Croatia abstained from the vote. The paper reported that representatives of Austria and Slovenia still had doubts over whether the deal would protect their citizens’ data from US surveillance.

Under the agreement, US companies will have to self-certify that they meet higher data protection standards, and the US Department of Commerce will be charged with conducting “regular reviews” to ensure compliance. The US has also assured EU member states that there will be “clear limitations, safeguards and oversight mechanisms” governing how law enforcement and federal agencies access the data of Europeans, and that bulk data collection would only be carried out “under specific preconditions and needs to be as targeted and focused as possible,” according to the European Commission.

“We have worked hard with all our partners in Europe and in the US to get this deal right and to have it done as soon as possible,” Andrus Ansip, vice president for the European Commission’s Digital Single Market initiative, said in a statement Tuesday. “Data flows between our two continents are essential to our society and economy – we now have a robust framework ensuring these transfers take place in the best and safest conditions.”

But some civil liberties groups are wary of Privacy Shield, questioning whether it will have any meaningful impact on consumer privacy. Privacy International, a London-based watchdog, expressed concerns over the new deal after a leaked version was published online last week, describing it in a post as “an opaque document that will be a field day for law firms.”  “In short: new ‘Shield’, old problems,” Tomaso Falchetta, legal officer at Privacy International, said in an email on Tuesday. “Given the flawed premises – trying to fix data protection deficit in the US by means of government’s assurances as opposed to meaningful legislative reform – it is not surprising that the new Privacy Shield remains full of holes and hence offers limited protection to personal data,” Falchetta added.

Rob Robinson’s Complex Discovery site includes a reference to the story here, which also includes a handy one-page PDF file that summarizes the new EU-US Privacy Shield.

So, what do you think?  Will the new “Privacy Shield” be an effective replacement to the old “Safe Harbor”?  Or will it be doomed to failure as well?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Court Grants Discovery on Individual Defendants’ Personal Computers and Email: eDiscovery Case Law

In Sunderland v. Suffolk County et. al., No. 13-4838 (E.D.N.Y., June 14, 2016), New York Magistrate Judge A. Kathleen Tomlinson, determining that the plaintiff’s request for individual defendants to search for and produce certain documents from their personal computers and email accounts was not “unduly intrusive or burdensome” because the request was limited in time frame and the parties had agreed to search terms, granted the plaintiff’s motion to compel.

Case Background

In this case where a transgender prison inmate sued the defendants claiming they acted “with deliberate indifference” to serious medical needs by denying hormone therapy for gender dysphoria, the plaintiff served discovery requests on the both the county and the individual defendants seeking documents and correspondence that contained certain search terms related to gender dysphoria, gender identity, transgender status and sexual preference. The parties agreed upon the search terms, but the defendants refused to conduct searches on individual personal computers and email. The plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel, which pointed out that the plaintiff had sued the individual defendants in their individual capacities, not their official capacities as medical personnel employed by the County.

Judge’s Ruling

Noting that the information requested by the plaintiff “falls within the broad scope of relevant discovery under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b) in light of Plaintiff’s allegations against the Individual Defendants and her Monell claim against the County”, Judge Tomlinson concluded that “Plaintiff has the right to pursue emails and other correspondence the Individual Defendants may have created/saved on their personal computers or sent from their personal email accounts which reference Plaintiff or discuss issues related to gender dysphoria.”

Judge Tomlinson noted that “to the extent such documents exist on the Individual Defendants’ personal computers, they may contain information going to bias or motivation which may show why a personal computer was used for such communications, including information which may support Plaintiff’s claims of deliberate indifference against the Individual Defendants.”  She also indicated that she “does not consider the requested discovery unduly intrusive or burdensome”, noting that the request “is limited to an approximate five-year time frame running from September 8, 2009 to January 3, 2014, which the Individual Defendants have not objected to in their opposition to Plaintiff’s motion. It also appears that the parties have agreed upon the search terms to be used.”  As a result, Judge Tomlinson granted the plaintiff’s motion to compel discovery from the individual defendants’ personal computers and email accounts.

So, what do you think?  Was the plaintiff entitled to discovery from the individuals’ computers and email accounts?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.