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International eDiscovery

Court Rules that Australian Company’s Duty to Preserve Only Begins when US Court Has Jurisdiction: eDiscovery Case Law

In Lunkenheimer Co. v. Tyco Flow Control Pacific Party Ltd., No. 1-11-cv-824 (S.D. Ohio Feb. 12, 2015), Ohio District Judge Timothy S. Black ruled that the duty to preserve for the defendant (an Australian company with offices and facilities only in Australia) did not begin until the complaint was filed in US courts in December 2011, denying the assertion of the intervenor/counter defendant that the duty to preserve arose in 2002.

Case Background

The intervenor/counter defendant alleged that the defendant refused to fully comply with the court’s October 2014 discovery order by failing to preserve, or satisfactorily search for and produce, evidence relating to the case and requested sanctions including striking the defendant’s counterclaims and what amounted to a summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff for $24.7 million.

With regard to the duty to preserve, the intervenor/counter defendant argued that the defendant’s duty to preserve began no later than October 1, 2002, about a month after the License had been signed, when an email from an executive at the defendant company questioned ownership of the assets and intellectual property associated with the license and the intervenor/counter defendant claimed that, from at least that date, the parties were in constant dispute over the existence of, and the defendant’s compliance with, the License.

The defendant argued that any duty to preserve under U.S. law could not have arisen before August 3, 2012, the date when the defendant answered the complaint and consented to U.S. jurisdiction, and, even if it had, it was not before the defendant was served on December 8, 2011. The defendant also noted that, throughout the nine years prior to Plaintiffs’ filing of this lawsuit, the plaintiffs continued to accept regular royalty payments of over $1.6 million for the first five years, took no action for another four years while the defendant continued to use the IP and never sent a dispute notice or termination notice during that time.

Judge’s Opinion

Citing In re Uranium Antitrust Litigation, 480 F. Supp. 1138 (N.D. Ill. 1979) in a footnote, Judge Black stated the following:

“The power of a U.S. Court to require compliance with U.S. discovery obligations does not arise until and unless the Court has jurisdiction.”

Judge Black noted that the defendant “is an Australian company with offices and facilities only in Australia”, that “Australian Law governs the License and was the anticipated jurisdiction for License-related disputes” and that “[n]o significant sales of Licensed Products were made into the U.S.” While acknowledging that the defendant “is not excused from an obligation to preserve evidence simply because it is a foreign company”, Judge Black ruled that “the only place litigation might at some point have been anticipated was in New South Wales, Australia—not Ohio or anywhere else in U.S. Accordingly, notwithstanding the fact that it may not have had jurisdiction over the PFCP until 2012, and in the absence of evidence that PFCP should have reasonably anticipated litigation in the United States any earlier, the Court finds that the duty to preserve began on December 8, 2011.”

So, what do you think? Do you agree that the defendant did not have a duty to preserve any earlier than the filing of the complaint? 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.

eDiscovery in Arbitration Has Become Less…Arbitrary – eDiscovery Trends
 

When you think of eDiscovery, you typically think of it as it relates to litigation – two sides of a case requesting and producing electronically stored information (ESI) as one means of identifying evidence designed to lead to resolution of a lawsuit.  But litigation is just one method for dispute resolution.  Another method is arbitration.  But, do arbitrators really “get” eDiscovery?

According to a new article in Corporate Counsel (Arbitrators Finally 'Get' E-discovery, written by Josh M. Leavitt), they finally do – thanks to the issuance of new rules (though some of those rules have actually been around for a while).  Leavitt observes that proponents of arbitration have considered the cost and delays of discovery “inconsistent with core principles of arbitration such as efficiency and cost-effectiveness” and that it was “not uncommon to go through substantial arbitrations without participating in anything remotely resembling either a federal e-discovery conference with opposing counsel or a prearbitration conference where the arbitration panel engaged the parties in meaningful and technically sound discussions about e-discovery.”

The end result was often either an ineffective, costly and/or manipulated discovery process.  However, as Leavitt notes, arbitral bodies JAMS and the American Arbitration Association (AAA) “now have protocols for e-discovery, as do several of the international arbitration providers”.

JAMS

The former Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services, now known as JAMS, Inc., published in January 2010 its Recommended Arbitration Discovery Protocols to “provide JAMS arbitrators with an effective tool that will help them exercise their sound judgment in furtherance of achieving an efficient, cost-effective process which affords the parties a fair opportunity to be heard.”  Also, Rule 16 of JAMS Comprehensive Arbitration Rules (also added in 2010) covers topics such as preliminary conferences, formats of production, metadata, custodians and cost shifting.

American Arbitration Association (AAA)

Last October, the AAA added new rules R-22 and R-23 to its Commercial Arbitration Rules and Mediation Procedures, which establishes parameters for arbitrators to manage exchange of ESI, impose ESI search parameters and make cost allocations and sanction noncompliance.  Also, the International Centre for Dispute Resolution® (ICDR), the international arm of the AAA, has published a 3 page Guidelines for Arbitrators Concerning Exchanges of Information to establish the authority for arbitrators to manage ESI and impose sanctions for noncompliance with their ESI orders.

With these resources available, arbitrators can make the process of eDiscovery less…arbitrary.

So, what do you think? Have you managed discovery in arbitration? Was it efficient?  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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Jason R. Baron of Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP – eDiscovery Trends

This is the eighth of the 2014 LegalTech New York (LTNY) Thought Leader Interview series.  eDiscoveryDaily interviewed several thought leaders after LTNY this year (don’t get us started) and generally asked each of them the following questions:

  1. What significant eDiscovery trends did you see at LTNY this year and what do you see for 2014?
  2. With new amendments to discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure now in the comment phase, do you see those being approved this year and what do you see as the impact of those Rules changes?
  3. It seems despite numerous resources in the industry, most attorneys still don’t know a lot about eDiscovery?  Do you agree with that and, if so, what do you think can be done to improve the situation?
  4. What are you working on that you’d like our readers to know about?

Today’s thought leader is Jason R. Baron.  An internationally recognized speaker and author on the preservation of electronic documents, Jason is a member of Drinker Biddle’s Information Governance and eDiscovery practice.  Jason previously served as Director of Litigation for the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and as trial lawyer and senior counsel at the Department of Justice.  He was a founding co-coordinator of the National Institute of Standards and Technology TREC Legal Track, a multi-year international information retrieval project devoted to evaluating search issues in a legal context.  He also founded the international DESI (Discovery of Electronically Stored Information) workshop series, bringing together lawyers and academics to discuss cutting-edge issues in eDiscovery.

What significant eDiscovery trends did you see at LTNY this year and what do you see for 2014?

I think that it was clear, not only to me but to many other attendees that I spoke with at the show, that there was a greater focus and attention this year on Information Governance.  It’s the new black.  You saw that especially in the educational sessions.  Now my good friend Ralph Losey, in a recent posting on his brillilant blog e-Discovery Team®, referred in passing to the topic of Information Governance as “boring” – however, what I think he meant to say is that if Information Governance is simply viewed as the current buzzword for what constitutes electronic recordkeeping best practices, that would be unfortunate.  It’s a lot more profound than that.

In my view, the types of analytics that we use in eDiscovery for predictive coding have an important role in Information Governance as well.  The research that I had some role in, coming out of the TREC Legal Track, and subsequent articles by Maura Grossman, Patrick Oot and others, have all helped to crystallize what constitute best practices in the eDiscovery search and document review space.  But the knowledge that we have gained about analytics in these various research studies, as validated in recent court opinions like Da Silva Moore, are applicable to a much broader application than merely in eDiscovery practice.

That is to say, we can all be smarter about using analytical methods to solve lots of legal issues which arise outside of the narrow band of eDiscovery but inside the broader realm of Information Governance.  Ralph discussed this in a recent blog when he referred to the idea of using “presuit” analytics to predict and prevent lawsuits from happening in the first place.  Ralph’s column shows that he certainly gets it, and that I can count him in as a true believer in pre-litigation analytics being accomplished to lower corporate overall risk including the prevention of potential lawsuits.

So, the hottest topic at LegalTech was Information Governance and, as part of that discussion, a conversation about what best practices are from a technology perspective in the space.  What other trends  out there were noted?

Other themes at LegalTech that reflect trends specifically affecting legal and eDiscovery practice: First, it’s clear to us that the cloud is becoming a dominant paradigm for the storage of big data, and that we need to continue to understand how eDiscovery in particular can be optimized in cloud environments.  Second, there is increased attention to the notion of technological competence, in light of the amendments to the Model professional rules of responsibility, including the comment to Rule 1 about the need for attorneys to be technologically competent in keeping up with the law.  That comment certainly means something in the eDiscovery space.  Beyond those two, we saw a conversation about new technologies and new ideas that are happening and that need to be absorbed into the practice of law – for example, sessions on drones and sessions that noted the “Internet of things”.  In all sorts of ways, these various discussion threads show that there are a thousand different ways to collect data in the world, all of it is ESI and all of it needs to be factored in when we’re litigating cases and when we’re trying to govern the data that organizations hold.

With new amendments to discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure now in the comment phase, do you see those being approved this year and what do you see as the impact of those Rules changes?

Well, my crystal ball tells me not to make predictions.  However, we’re now up to 700 comments in the last week leading up to the February 15, 2014 deadline for responding. [Editor’s note: over 2,000 comments were submitted by the actual deadline.]  Those comments are sharply divided between a community of plaintiffs’ counsel who question the necessity for rules change, and the defense bar, which at least a part of which strongly urges rules changes in the belief that the present rules encourage over-preservation of evidence, and that more in the way of limitations imposed on discovery should now be imposed.  So, that’s the battleground.  I think a good bet in the space is that the language that emerges is going to be much like the amendments currently proposed, but no one knows for sure.

My view about the amendments is a different one than what has been reflected in most of the comments, which I have put forward on behalf of the Information Governance Initiative (see below).  The view that I have is that there are aspects of the rules amendments that can be supported, and certainly Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 1 should be amended to incorporate the notion of parties cooperating.   However, what I believe to be of greater importance than rules change is a recognition on the part of the judiciary as well as all litigants that the volume and complexity of data is doubling every couple of years, and the technological environment is one that should include advanced tools to help remediate the severe challenges we all face in terms of the preservation of ESI. We live in a world of exponential growth of big data and we need to deal with that fact at a more foundational level than with rules changes for litigation.  So, I urge that we pay attention to both best practices as a matter of technology in the maintenance of big data in electronic systems, as well as continued education of the bench and bar on how to deal with this new reality — because we’re not going back to the 20th century.  The world of exabytes that we live in is only getting bigger and we have to deal with it.  In my mind, I’m attempting to carve out a middle ground where the rules debate is not as draconian or as starkly imagined as parties would reflect in the comments, but rather that we need to step back and ask more fundamental questions.

It seems despite numerous resources in the industry, most attorneys still don’t know a lot about eDiscovery?  Do you agree with that and, if so, what do you think can be done to improve the situation?

Every survey that I know of drives this point home, that there is a “bubble” that some of us practice in where we go from conference to conference, acting as if the 2006 rules amendments are “old hat,” whereas the concept of how to deal with ESI is something new and novel to many others.  So, there is a learning curve that exists where the greater part of the legal community needs to become better versed in the more advanced aspects of eDiscovery.  By now, everyone knows about email potentially being relevant evidence, but not very many people could step through a workflow on predictive coding.  Nor do they necessarily have to do so in a large swath of cases that, candidly, are not a candidate for the most advanced methods.  We need to apply some degree of proportionality analysis to competence and the level of competence that someone needs is dependent on the complexity of the case.  If there is giant litigation that involves billions of documents, then you really need to understand the technical issues at hand, and what questions to ask, to ensure that you’re using the most advanced and efficient search and document review methods.  On the other hand, if you have a case that is only a couple of hundred documents that is in state court or some local jurisdiction, then these more advanced methods are obviously not needed.

So, I think there is an aspect that you’re exactly right to point out, that this is all still new, and we are still maturing in mapping out defensible ediscovery practices in the post-2006 Rules amendment world. But, increasingly, as I have said, we live in a world of digital information.  Whether it’s a family law case involving the exchange of emails or an employment case or even a hit and run case involving GPS data, attorneys are necessarily finding that there cases do indeed involve aspects of discovery where digital or electronic evidence is material and important.  To that extent, all lawyers need to know something about how to preserve, how to collect, how to review and how to produce ESI.  It is clear to me as the years go by that the bar is getting raised in a greater and greater number of cases and that more and more lawyers need to be competent with respect to basic eDiscovery.

What are you working on that you’d like our readers to know about?

Here’s one thing I’m very excited about.  Bennett Borden, who is chair of the Information Governance and eDiscovery practice here at Drinker Biddle, and Barclay Blair, who runs the company ViaLumina and is a thought leader in the Information Governance space, have teamed up to found the Information Governance Initiative and invited me to act as Co-Chair.  The Initiative is a vendor-neutral industry consortium and think tank which has as its mission a goal of fostering discussion about best practices in the Information Governance space.  We have received a large outpouring of goodwill in the form of individuals joining up as members (it’s free to join, by the way), as well as corporate sponsors who have products and services that address IG issues.  And we hope through various platforms that there will be a better smarter dialogue about how to deal with the challenges of big data and Information Governance using many of the analytical methods that I alluded to earlier.  This is exciting to be part of and I’m delighted, after joining Drinker Biddle, to be able to work with Bennett, Barclay, as well as Jay Brudz and others, to attempt to provide some measure of thought leadership in this space.

I should note that there are other great organizations who are also putting on programs, including The Sedona Conference, which has put out a wonderful Commentary on Information Governance spearheaded by Sedona WG1 chair Conor Crowley, that’s freely available for download.  Sedona and ARMA have also teamed up to put on an information governance conference coming up in April 2014 in Florida.  These are all great to advance the ball.    Hopefully, all of our collective efforts will help to jump start serious conversations around optimizing IG.  For my part, I certainly would encourage individuals to look up the IG Initiative and participate in future activities. (See www.iginitiative.com.)

Thanks, Jason, for participating in the interview!

And to the readers, as always, 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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

ASU-Arkfeld eDiscovery and Digital Evidence Conference – eDiscovery Trends

Apparently, next week is the week for eDiscovery conferences.

Last week, I told you about a two-day program being hosted next week in my hometown of Houston by The Sedona Conference®.  Then, on Tuesday, I told you about the Second Annual Electronic Discovery Conference for the Small and Medium Case, hosted by the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida and EDRM also next week.  Now, here is another conference alternative for next week – the Third Annual ASU-Arkfeld eDiscovery and Digital Evidence Conference, hosted by Arizona State University and noted eDiscovery expert Michael Arkfeld.

The conference will be held next week, March 12-14 at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law / Armstrong Hall at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.  As the downloadable brochure states, the conference will be “[f]ocusing on the practical issues affecting the discovery and admission of electronic information.  Attendees will be participating with thought leaders and practitioners of eDiscovery on issues impacting legal professionals locally, nationally, and globally.”

The conference will include:

  • noted eDiscovery judges, including Shira A. Scheindlin (who will be giving the keynote address on the first morning), John Facciola, and Craig Shaffer;
  • knowledgeable in-house counsel and eDiscovery specialists, including Robert Amicone from Office Depot, Tom Morrissey from Purdue Pharma and Kit Goetz from Qualcomm;
  • distinguished outside counsel, including Robert Singleton from Squire Sanders, Mark Sidoti from Gibbons, Joy Woller from Lewis Roca Rothgerber, Maura Grossman from Wachtell, and Ariana Tadler from Milberg and;
  • dedicated litigation support professionals including Tom O’Connor, Steven Goldstein, and Anne Kershaw.

Topics run the full range of the eDiscovery life cycle – from information management strategies to dispose of “zombie data” (I like that term) to meet and confer, preservation, collection, data analytics and technology assisted review, production formats, eDiscovery for criminal cases and cross-border issues and eDiscovery project management best practices.  You can earn up to 15 hours of CLE credit for attending.

It’s too late for early bird pricing, but regular attendees can still register prior to the show for $595.  Government, non-profit and paralegal registrants can do so for $345; if you’re a student, it only costs $95 to attend.  Those rates are $695/$395/$115, respectively, if you wait until the day the show starts.  Discounted group rates are also available.  You can register for the conference online here.

So, what do you think? Do you plan to attend the program, or perhaps one of the other programs next week? 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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

New Survey Sheds Light on How Corporate Legal Departments Handle Outsourcing – eDiscovery Trends

These days, it seems as though every company is outsourcing work overseas.  Are corporate legal departments following suit?

Only to a point, according to a new survey available from ALM Legal Intelligence and discussed on David Hechler’s article on Corporate Counsel (The 2013 Legal Process Outsourcing Survey).  According to the article, “The LPO industry is like sex: There’s plenty of talk about it, but no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. Vendors will tell you that it’s really taking off—or is about to. They cite numbers in the billions of dollars, but these always seem to be projections.”

So, as the author notes, “we decided to ask corporate law departments (but not their law firms) to tell us about their experiences. We created an online survey and sent it out to lots of departments. We also posted links on CorpCounsel.com and invited readers to click in. And we asked not only whether they’ve made the leap, but, for those who have, where they’re sending work, what kind of work they outsource, what motivated them, and how they feel about the results.”

Here are some of the published results:

  • 54 percent of the respondents have outsourced legal work at some point;
  • Of the respondents who have outsourced legal work, 26 percent were “very satisfied” with the results, 41 percent were “satisfied”, 29 percent were “somewhat satisfied” and only 3 percent were “not at all satisfied” – meaning that over 2/3 of the respondents were at least satisfied with the work performed;
  • 65 percent of the respondents who have outsourced legal work have only done so within the US, while 35 percent have outsourced abroad (64 percent of those have sent work to India);
  • Document review and electronic discovery were the most frequently cited types of work being outsourced;
  • Asked why they outsourced legal work, fully 35 percent said “to test the idea.” This was the third most common reason, behind “lowering costs” and “reducing the time required to complete the work.”

Based on the survey, it appears that, while more organizations outsource legal work than don’t, most still haven’t dipped their toe in overseas waters (at least yet).

The full survey is available from ALM Legal Intelligence here for $599.

So, what do you think?  Did you expect overseas outsourcing to be more prevalent?   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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Award to Apple in Samsung Case Cut Almost in Half, For Now – eDiscovery Case Law

In Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., Case No.: C 11-CV-01846-LHK (N.D. Cal. Mar. 1, 2013), District Judge Lucy Koh reduced the amount of the previous jury award against Samsung in its ongoing intellectual property case from nearly $1.05 billion to over $598 million, due to ordering a new trial on damages for several Samsung products that amounted to over $450 million being stricken from the jury’s award.

In August of last year, a jury of nine found that Samsung infringed all but one of the seven patents at issue and found all seven of Apple’s patents valid – despite Samsung’s attempts to have them thrown out. They also determined that Apple didn’t violate any of the five patents Samsung asserted in the case.  Apple had been requesting $2.5 billion in damages.  Apple later requested additional damages of $707 million to be added to the $1.05 billion jury verdict.  This case was notable from an eDiscovery perspective due to the adverse inference instruction issued by California Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal against Samsung just prior to the start of trial for spoliation of data, though it appears that the adverse inference instruction did not have a significant impact in the verdict.

Notice of the Patents

A significant portion of this ruling was related to notice of the patents.  As Judge Koh noted in her ruling, “Under 35 U.S.C. § 287(a), there can be no damages award where a defendant did not have actual or constructive notice of the patent or registered trade dress at issue. Thus, it is improper to award damages for sales made before the defendant had notice of the patent, and an award that includes damages for sales made before notice of any of the intellectual property (“IP”) infringed is excessive as a matter of law.”  The parties disputed whether Apple had given Samsung notice of each of the patents prior to the filing of the complaint and the amended complaint.

Apple had provided to the Court numbers necessary to calculate Samsung’s profits and reasonable royalty awards based on damages numbers provided by Apple’s damages expert, but with later notice dates, enabling the Court, for some products, to calculate how much of the jury’s award compensated for the sales before Samsung had notice of the relevant IP.  However, as Judge Koh noted, “for other products, the jury awarded an impermissible form of damages for some period of time, because Samsung had notice only of utility patents for some period, but an award of infringer’s profits was made covering the entire period from August 4, 2010 to June 15, 2012. For these products, the Court cannot remedy the problem by simply subtracting the extra sales.” {emphasis added}  The Court had instructed the jury that infringer’s profits are not a legally permissible remedy for utility patent infringement.

Ruling

Therefore, Judge Koh ordered a new trial on damages for 14 products, totaling $450,514,650 being stricken from the jury’s award.  This left an award of $598,908,892 on the remaining awarded products.

So, what do you think?  What will be the final award and how much will it cost to determine that?  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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Stored Communications Act Limits Production of Google Emails – eDiscovery Case Law

In Optiver Australia Pty. Ltd. & Anor. v. Tibra Trading Pty. Ltd. & Ors. (N.D.Cal., January 23, 2013), California Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal granted much of the defendant’s motion to quash subpoena of Google for electronic communications sent or received by certain Gmail accounts allegedly used by employees of the defendant because most of the request violated the terms of the Stored Communications Act.

The plaintiff alleged that several of its former employees copied the plaintiff’s proprietary source code, left the plaintiff company, and used the code to found the defendant in 2006.  After receiving a production from the defendant, the plaintiff “suspected that key emails relating to the allegedly stolen code were previously deleted”; as a result, the Federal Court of Australia ordered further discovery.  The defendant filed an ex parte application for judicial assistance pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1782 to serve a subpoena upon Google for documents to be used in the foreign proceeding, which was granted.

The plaintiff submitted two requests to Google, as follows:

  • “Request One: Documents sufficient to identify the recipient(s), sender, subject, date sent, date received, date read, and date deleted of emails, email attachments, or Google Talk messages that contain either of the terms ‘PGP’ or ‘Optiver’ (case insensitive) sent or received between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2007” for selected email addresses; and
  • “Request Two: Documents sufficient to show the recipient(s), sender, subject, date sent, date received, date read, and date deleted of emails, email attachments, or Google Talk messages sent or received between November 3, 2005 to December 31, 2009 that were sent to or from” selected email addresses.

The defendant moved to quash the subpoena.

Judge Grewal noted that “it is well-established that civil subpoenas, including those issued pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1782, are subject to the prohibitions of the Stored Communications Act (‘SCA)”, which was passed in 1986.  The SCA prohibits service providers from knowingly disclosing the contents of a user’s electronic communications.

Judge Grewal ruled that the plaintiff’s “Request One is invalid because it seeks disclosure of the terms ‘Optiver’ and ‘PGP’” and granted the defendant’s motion to quash that request.  As for Request Two, Judge Grewal ruled that it “violates the SCA insofar as it seeks the subject of the communications, but the remainder is permissible.”  Therefore, he ruled that Google was required to provide only the following: “Documents sufficient to show the recipient(s), sender, date sent, date received, date read, and date deleted of emails, email attachments, or Google Talk messages sent or received between November 3, 2005 to December 31, 2009 that were sent to or from the email addresses listed”.

So, what do you think?  Was the correct information excluded due to the SCA?  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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Blind Reliance on Vendor for Discovery Results in Sanctions – eDiscovery Case Law

In Peerless Indus., Inc. v. Crimson AV, LLC, No. 1:11-cv-1768 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 8, 2013), Illinois Magistrate Judge Susan E. Cox sanctioned the defendant for a “hands off approach” to discovery by relying on a vendor for conducting the discovery from a closely related non-party to the suit.  The opinion and order can be downloaded here.

The plaintiff sued the defendant and its managing director, Vladimir Gleyzer, in a patent infringement case and filed two motions: 1) a motion to compel the deposition of Tony Jin, and 2) a renewed motion for sanctions.

Motion to Compel Deposition

Jin, the president of China-based Sycamore, was found in a previous ruling to be “principal of both Crimson and Sycamore and that he exercise[d] a considerable amount of financial and managerial control over both companies”, with much of basis for the decision coming from the testimony of Gleyzer himself.  Based on a five-factor test to determine whether Jin was a managing agent, Judge Cox determined that “Mr. Jin appears to satisfy nearly every factor”, granted the plaintiff’s motion to compel the deposition and ordered it to be conducted in the Northern District of Illinois, not in China.

Motion for Sanctions

As for the plaintiff’s renewed motion for sanctions, it was the 30(b)(6) deposition of Gleyzer that made it “clear that defendant did not conduct a reasonable investigation regarding Sycamore’s document production or Sycamore’s document retention for purposes of this litigation.”  Gleyzer “was apparently unable to answer questions about Sycamore’s computer and backup systems, what searches were performed, which employees had relevant information, whether a document hold had been implemented, or whether employees at Sycamore were even contacted regarding plaintiff’s document request.”

So, why was the defendant’s 30(b)(6) deponent unable to answer such basic questions?  As noted in the order, “What is evident from Mr. Gleyzer’s deposition, however, is that defendants took a back seat approach and instead let the process proceed through a vendor.  Mr. Gleyzer testified that there was a process outlined ‘I guess by the vendor’ so the vendor provided instruction to Mr. Jin on how to collect documents.  Crimson, or at least Mr. Gleyzer himself, then had no part in the process of obtaining the requested discovery or of determining how Sycamore managed their documents and what might be relevant to plaintiff’s requests.”

Judge Cox stated: “Such a hands-off approach is insufficient.  Because of the control or ‘close coordination’ between the two companies, defendants were required to produce the requested information.  Defendants cannot place the burden of compliance on an outside vendor and have no knowledge, or claim no control, over the process.”

Sanctions Granted

As a result, Judge Cox granted the motion for sanctions and instructed the plaintiff to “submit a bill of costs for the preparation for the motion of sanctions” by January 31 – which they did, for $16,408.  The defendant has appealed the ruling.

Using vendors for various stages of discovery is common, but that doesn’t excuse the producing party from being fully knowledgeable about the process that took place.  What’s interesting is how the defendant was sunk by its own 30(b)(6) witness, who is also a named party in the suit.  For some best practices regarding preparing your 30(b)(6) witness, click here.

So, what do you think?  Were the sanctions appropriate?  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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

When is a Billion Dollars Not Enough? – eDiscovery Case Law
 

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.

Back in August, a jury of nine found that Samsung infringed all but one of the seven patents at issue and found all seven of Apple's patents valid – despite Samsung's attempts to have them thrown out. They also determined that Apple didn't violate any of the five patents Samsung asserted in the case.  Apple had been requesting $2.5 billion in damages.  Trial Judge Lucy Koh could still also triple the damage award because the jury determined Samsung had acted willfully.

Interviewed after the trial, some of the jurors cited video testimony from Samsung executives and internal emails as key to the verdict, which was returned after just 22 hours of deliberation, despite the fact that the verdict form contained as many as 700 points the jury (including charges brought against different subsidiaries of the two companies addressing multiple patents and numerous products).

Role of Adverse Inference Sanction

As noted on this blog last month, Samsung received an adverse inference instruction from California Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal just prior to the start of trial as failure to turn “off” the auto-delete function in Samsung’s proprietary “mySingle” email system resulted in spoliation of evidence as potentially responsive emails were deleted after the duty to preserve began.  As a result, Judge Grewal ordered instructions to the jury to indicate that Samsung had failed to preserve evidence and that evidence could be presumed relevant and favorable to Apple.  However, Judge Lucy Koh decided to modify the “adverse inference” verdict issued for the jury to include instructions that Apple had also failed to preserve evidence.  Therefore, it appears as though the adverse inference instruction was neutralized and did not have a significant impact in the verdict; evidently, enough damning evidence was discovered that doomed Samsung in this case.

Friday's Filings

In a motion filed on Friday, Apple sought approximately $400 million additional in damages for design infringement by Samsung; approximately $135 million for willful infringement of its utility patents; approximately $121 million in supplemental damages based on Samsung's product sales not covered in the jury's deliberation; and approximately $50 million of prejudgment interest on damages through December 31 – total of $707 million requested.  Apple also requested an injunction to cover "any of the infringing products or any other product with a feature or features not more than colorably different from any of the infringing feature or features in any of the Infringing Products."

Not surprisingly, Samsung submitted a filing on Friday, requesting a new trial “enabling adequate time and even-handed treatment of the parties”, stating “The Court's constraints on trial time, witnesses and exhibits were unprecedented for a patent case of this complexity and magnitude, and prevented Samsung from presenting a full and fair case in response to Apple's many claims.”

So, what do you think?  Will Apple get more money?  Will Samsung get a new trial?  If so, will there be more discovery sanctions?  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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery Case Law: Apple Wins 1.05 Billion Dollar Verdict Against Samsung
 

Yes, that’s billion, with a “b”.

A jury of nine on Friday found that Samsung infringed all but one of the seven patents at issue in a high-stakes court battle between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. The patent that they determined hadn’t infringed was a patent covering the physical design of the iPad. The jurors found all seven of Apple's patents valid—despite Samsung's attempts to have them thrown out. They also determined that Apple didn't violate any of the five patents Samsung asserted in the case.

Apple had been requesting $2.5 billion in damages.  While the award was much less than that, it was still larger than Samsung’s estimates and is among the largest intellectual-property awards on record.  Trial Judge Lucy Koh could also triple the damage award because the jury determined Samsung had acted willfully.

Interviewed after the trial, some of the jurors cited video testimony from Samsung executives and internal emails as key to the verdict.  Jury foreman Velvin Hogan indicated that video testimony from Samsung executives made it "absolutely" clear the infringement was done on purpose.  Another juror, Manuel Ilagan, said , "The e-mails that went back and forth from Samsung execs about the Apple features that they should incorporate into their devices was pretty damning to me."

The verdict was returned Friday afternoon after 22 hours of deliberation, despite the fact that the verdict form contained as many as 700 points the jury (including charges brought against different subsidiaries of the two companies addressing multiple patents and numerous products).

Role of Adverse Inference Sanction

As noted on this blog just a few days ago, Samsung received an adverse inference instruction from California Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal just prior to the start of trial as failure to turn “off” the auto-delete function in Samsung’s proprietary “mySingle” email system resulted in spoliation of evidence as potentially responsive emails were deleted after the duty to preserve began.  As a result, Judge Grewal ordered instructions to the jury to indicate that Samsung had failed to preserve evidence and that evidence could be presumed relevant and favorable to Apple.

However, after Samsung accused Apple to have also destroyed and tampered with evidence that could have benefited Samsung in the trial, Judge Lucy Koh decided to modify the “adverse inference” verdict issued for the jury to include instructions that Apple had also failed to preserve evidence.  Therefore, it appears as though the adverse inference instruction was neutralized and did not have a significant impact in the verdict; evidently, enough damning evidence was discovered that doomed Samsung in this case.

Samsung, of course, is expected to appeal.

So, what do you think?  Will this verdict impact discovery in future intellectual property cases?  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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.