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Cloning of Computer Files: When There’s a Will, There’s a Way – eDiscovery Case Law

In Matter of Tilimbo, No. 329/M-2007, 2012 N.Y. Misc. (Surr. Ct., Bronx Cnty. Aug. 22, 2012), a court held it was permissible to order cloning of computer files where doing so did not place an unreasonable burden on a nonparty, appropriate steps were taken to protect any privileged information, and the nonparty had not previously produced the requested information in hard copy.

In this claim based on a will contest, the plaintiffs moved for an order permitting their computer forensic expert to examine the personal computer hard drive of a nonparty witness, the deceased’s attorney Patrick Wynne, limited to finding and reviewing documents related to Rose Tilimbo, her will, as well as a deed transfer from her to Salvatore Tilimbo that formed the basis of the will contest. Wynne objected on the basis that he had already, at the court’s direction, been deposed on the subject and “provided an affirmation stating that he conducted the requisite diligent search of his ‘computer files and any other [additional] relevant files’ and did not find responsive documents or computer files.” He argued that “a balancing of the sanctity of the attorney-client privilege against the scope of permissible discovery warrant[ed] the denial of the motion.”

Noting that ESI of a nonparty is discoverable, the court held that so long as it did not place an unreasonable burden on Wynne, a solo practitioner, the examination and cloning of Wynne’s computer was permissible. Although Wynne had produced in hard copy all of the documents he said he possessed, the court pointed out that such disclosures did not prevent the ESI itself from being sought. In addition, Wynne had not been able to produce any documents related to the deed transfer at issue, and any such documents that existed would clearly be material and relevant to the case. Therefore, the court offered the following parameters for the cloning:

“The court finds that the cloning would not place an unreasonable burden upon Wynne if all of the computers can be cloned at his office in four hours or less on a date and at a time that he selects, which may include in whole or in part a time after normal business hours. Alternatively, the cloning will be allowed outside of Wynne’s office if it can be done by removing the computer(s) on a Saturday at any time selected by Wynne and returned to his office by Monday between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m. If Wynne prefers, the computer(s) may be removed from his office on any other day, provided the computer(s) are returned to his office within 24 hours. If the cloning is to be done outside of Wynne’s office and more than one computer is to be cloned, then at Wynne’s option, only one computer may be removed from his office at a time. In the event that the cloning can be accomplished within the time allocated herein either at Wynne’s office or by removal of the computer(s), Wynne shall have the right to select whether or not he wants the cloning to be done at his office. In the event that the cloning requested by the movants cannot be performed within the time frame provided herein, the court finds that the disruption to Wynn’s practice of law outweighs the benefits that the movants might obtain from the information provided by the cloning. Furthermore, should a computer be removed from Wynne’s office and not returned within the time provided herein, the movants shall pay Wynne $200 for each hour or part thereof that the return is delayed.”

In addition, the forensic analysts were limited to locating documents likely to lead to discoverable evidence related to the decedent and were given specific instructions on what to do with any unrelated documents that were accidentally uncovered.

So, what do you think?  Should cloning of the computer have been allowed?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case Summary Source: Applied Discovery (free subscription required).  For eDiscovery news and best practices, check out the Applied Discovery Blog here.

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.

Are You Requesting the Best Production Format for Your Case? – eDiscovery Best Practices

One of the blogs I read regularly is Ball in your Court from Craig Ball, a previous thought leader interviewee on this blog.  His post from last Tuesday, Are They Trying to Screw Me?, is one that all attorneys that request ESI productions should read.

Ball describes a fairly typical proposed production format, as follows:

“Documents will be produced as single page TIFF files with multi-page extracted text or OCR.  We will furnish delimited IPRO or Opticon load files and will later identify fielded information we plan to exchange.”

Then, he asks the question: “Are they trying to screw you?”  Answer: “Probably not.”  But, “Are you screwing yourself by accepting the proposed form of production?  Yes, probably.”

With regard to producing TIFF files, Ball notes that “Converting a native document to TIFF images is lobotomizing the document.”  The TIFF image is devoid of any of the metadata that provides valuable information about the way in which the document was used, making analysis of the produced documents a much more difficult effort.  Ball sums up TIFF productions by saying “Think of a TIFF as a PDF’s retarded little brother.  I mean no offense by that, but TIFFs are not just differently abled; they are severely handicapped.  Not born that way, but lamed and maimed on purpose.  The other side downgrades what they give you, making it harder to use and stripping it of potentially-probative content.”

Opposing counsel isn’t trying to screw you with a TIFF production.  They just do it because they always provide it that way.  And, you accept it that way because you’ve always accepted it that way.  Ball notes that “You may accept the screwed up proposal because, even if the data is less useful and incomplete, you won’t have to evolve.  You’ll pull the TIFF images into your browser and painstakingly read them one-by-one, just like good ol’ paper; all-the-while telling yourself that what you didn’t get probably wasn’t that important and promising yourself that next time, you’ll hold out for the good stuff—the native stuff.”

We recently ran a blog series called First Pass Review – Of Your Opponent’s Data.  In that series, we discussed how useful that Early Data Assessment/FirstPass Review applications can be in reviewing your opponent’s produced ESI.  At CloudNine Discovery, we use FirstPass®, powered by Venio FPR™ for first pass review – it provides a number of mechanisms that are useful in analyzing your opponent’s produced data.  Capabilities like email analytics and message thread analysis (where missing emails in threads can be identified), synonym searching, fuzzy searching and domain categorization are quite useful in developing an understanding of your opponents production.  However, these mechanisms are only as useful as the data they’re analyzing.  Email analytics, message thread analysis and domain categorization are driven by metadata, so they are useless on TIFF/OCR/data productions.  You can’t analyze what you don’t have.

It’s time to evolve.  To get the most information out of your opponent’s production, you need to request the production in native format.  Opponents are probably not trying to screw you by producing in TIFF format, but you are screwing yourself if you decide to accept it in that format.

So, what do you think?  Do you request native productions from your opponents?  If not, why not?  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 Sanctions Can Happen in Police Brutality Cases Too – eDiscovery Case Law
 

As reported in the Seattle Times, Pierce County (Washington) Superior Court Judge Stephanie Arend issued a $300,000 sanction against King County for failure to produce key documents illustrating the previous troubling behavior of a sheriff deputy who tackled Christopher Sean Harris and left him permanently brain-damaged.  Judge Arend also indicated that the county would be liable for attorneys' fees and possibly compensatory damages for the Harris family.  This after King County had settled with the Harris family for $10 million in January 2011 during a civil trial in King County Superior Court.

After being wrongly identified as a suspect in an earlier bar fight, Harris was tackled and pushed into a wall by Deputy Matthew Paul in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood in May 2009 and left brain-damaged, paralyzed and unable to speak. After reaching a settlement during the civil trial, Harris' attorneys claimed the Sheriff's Office and county withheld emails and other documents that outlined internal concerns about unnecessary or excessive force used by Paul in other incidents. They filed a motion at the end of last year asking Arend to sanction the county and order it to pay an additional $3.3 million.

Documents alleged by Harris’ attorneys to have been intentionally withheld by the King County Sheriff’s office include:

  • A thread of emails to Paul's supervisor about his behavior at the Basic Law Enforcement Academy, where concerns were raised about Paul having "exhibited behaviors that were a concern" and had used force that was "far above the norm" when working with a smaller female trainee.  While the county indicated that a search failed to locate these emails, Judge Arend, in the ruling, noted that "any competent electronic discovery effort would have located this email."
  • There was also a citizen complaint against Paul in May 2010 after a Seattle resident stopped to videotape Paul and other deputies deal with an intoxicated person and the resident was tackled by Paul and suffered a broken nose.  The resident has filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against Paul and the county.
  • There were also documents about another use-of-force incident that was not put into Paul’s personnel file until the Harris’ case was settled.

"This reckless indifference in its failure to produce these three documents — documents that were indisputably relevant — is the functional equivalent of intentional misconduct," Judge Arend noted, calling the county’s failure to produce these documents as “reprehensible”.

Because the family would have filed a civil-rights lawsuit if they had known about these other instances, Judge Arend said she will decide about further damages after a hearing for Harris' attorneys to attempt to show that they would have prevailed in a civil-rights case with the additional documents.

Amazingly, Paul remains on the force.

So, what do you think?  Was the sanction severe enough?  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.

Twitter Turns Over Tweets in People v. Harris – eDiscovery Case Law

As reported by Reuters, Twitter has turned over Tweets and Twitter account user information for Malcolm Harris in People v. Harris, after their motion for a stay of enforcement was denied by the Appellate Division, First Department in New York and they faced a finding of contempt for not turning over the information.  Twitter surrendered an “inch-high stack of paper inside a mailing envelope” to Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino, which will remain under seal while a request for a stay by Harris is heard in a higher court.

Back in April, Harris, an Occupy Wall Street activist facing criminal charges, tried to quash a subpoena seeking production of his Tweets and his Twitter account user information in his New York criminal case.  That request was rejected, so Twitter then sought to quash the subpoena themselves, claiming that the order to produce the information imposed an “undue burden” on Twitter and even forced it to “violate federal law”.

Then, on June 30, Judge Sciarrino ruled that Twitter must produce tweets and user information of Harris, noting: “If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. There is no proprietary interest in your tweets, which you have now gifted to the world. This is not the same as a private email, a private direct message, a private chat, or any of the other readily available ways to have a private conversation via the internet that now exist…Those private dialogues would require a warrant based on probable cause in order to access the relevant information.”  Judge Sciarrino indicated that his decision was “partially based on Twitter’s then terms of service agreement”, which was subsequently modified to add the statement “You Retain Your Right To Any Content You Submit, Post Or Display On Or Through The Service.”

Twitter filed an appeal of the trial court’s decision in with the Appellate Division, First Department in New York, but, unfortunately for Twitter, it didn’t take long for the appellate court panel to rule, as they denied Twitter’s motion for a stay of enforcement of the Trial Court’s order to produce Malcolm Harris’s tweets.  Twitter was ultimately given a deadline by the Trial Court during a hearing on the District Attorney’s motion (for Twitter to show cause as to why they should not be held in contempt for failure to produce the tweets) to produce Harris’s information by Friday September 14 or face a finding of contempt. Judge Sciarrino even went so far as to warn Twitter that he would review their most recent quarterly financial statements in determining the appropriate financial penalty if Twitter did not obey the order.  Now they have, though the information has been kept under seal (at least for now).

As the Reuters article notes, “The case has drawn interest from privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which have filed an amicus brief in support of Twitter’s appeal.  They are concerned the ruling could set a precedent putting the onus on social media companies to try to protect their users from criminal prosecution.”

So, what do you think?  Will the stay be denied or will the information remain under seal?  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.

Home Depot’s “Extremely Broad” Request for Social Media Posts Denied – eDiscovery Case Law
 

In Mailhoit v. Home Depot, CV 11 03892 DOC (SSx) (C.D. Cal.; Sept. 7, 2012), Magistrate Judge Suzanne Segal ruled that the three out of four of the defendant’s discovery requests failed Federal Rule 34(b)(1)(A)’s “reasonable particularity” requirement, were, therefore, not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence and were denied.

Case Background

The plaintiff had been a manager of the defendant's store in Burbank, California, and filed a suit against her employer after being fired, charging unlawful discrimination based on gender, as well as failure to accommodate her known physical disability.  The plaintiff testified at her deposition that she suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, depression and isolation, and has cut herself off from communication with friends because of Defendant’s alleged wrongdoing.  The defendant argued “that it is entitled to Plaintiff’s communications posted on social networking sites (“SNS”) such as Facebook and LinkedIn to test Plaintiff’s claims about her mental and emotional state.”

Defendant’s Motion to Compel

The defendant filed a Motion to Compel Further Responses to Defendant’s Request for Production of Documents, which included a request for (among other things):

“Any profiles, postings or messages (including status updates, wall comments, causes joined, groups joined, activity streams, blog entries) from social networking sites from October 2005(the approximate date Plaintiff claims she first was discriminated against by Home Depot), through the present, that reveal, refer, or relate to any emotion, feeling, or mental state of Plaintiff, as well as communications by or from Plaintiff that reveal, refer, or relate to events that could reasonably be expected to produce a significant emotion, feeling, or mental state”.

The defendant also requested “[t]hird-party communications to Plaintiff that place her own communications in context”, “[a]ll social networking communications between Plaintiff and any current or former Home Depot employees” and any pictures posted to the plaintiff’s profile or otherwise linked via tagging.

Judge Rules against Defendant in Three of Four Categories

Judge Segal noted that “while a party may conduct discovery concerning another party’s emotional state, the discovery itself must still comply with the general principles underlying the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that govern discovery.  A court can limit discovery if it determines, among other things, that the discovery is…unreasonably cumulative or duplicative”.  Since Rule 34(b) requires the requesting party to describe the items to be produced with “reasonable particularity”, Judge Segal ruled that “three of the four categories of SNS communications sought by Defendant fail Rule 34(b)(1)(A)’s ‘reasonable particularity’ requirement”, only granting the defendant’s request for social networking communications between Plaintiff and any current or former Home Depot employees.

So, what do you think?  Should the defendant’s requests have been denied, or were they “unreasonably cumulative”?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Thanks to the Ride the Lightning blog for the tip on this case!

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.

Inadvertent Disclosure? Got Clawback? – eDiscovery Best Practices
 

As discovery becomes more complex and voluminous, it seems as though we’re seeing more and more cases where inadvertent disclosures of privileged documents are becoming more common.  In just the past couple of months, we’ve discussed two cases on this blog, where the producing parties were forced to waive privilege of those documents when they failed the now popular five factor test to determine whether an inadvertent disclosure entitles the producing party to have the documents returned.  Perhaps if they had a well-defined “clawback” agreement, the results would have been different?

What is a “Clawback” Agreement?

A clawback agreement enables the parties in a case to agree – in advance – that if privileged documents are inadvertently produced during discovery, privilege on those documents won’t be waived. The inadvertently produced documents are instead returned to the producing party, or destroyed by the receiving party – either way, they are not used by the receiving party.  As part of that agreement, each party is able to identify documents that it has inadvertently produced and request that they be returned or destroyed by the opposing party.  Per the clawback agreement, the opposing party agrees to comply with that request and not make a claim of waiver.

Protection of Waiver under FRE 502

Federal Rule of Evidence 502 (FRE 502) was enacted in 2008 to provide additional reassurances for parties dealing with the problem of inadvertent waiver.  Under FRE 502, inadvertent disclosure of privileged material does not operate as a waiver if three conditions are met:

  • The disclosure is inadvertent
  • The holder of the privilege took reasonable steps to prevent disclosure
  • The holder promptly took reasonable steps to rectify the error

What a Clawback Agrement Should Include

To promote compliance with the three conditions, the clawback agreement should address each one, clearly stating that inadvertent production of privileged material will not waive privilege, and addressing the steps that should be taken to avoid inadvertent disclosure, as well as to rectify the error, if such inadvertent disclosure occurs.  The definition of “reasonable steps” in each case is in the eye of the beholder, so it’s a good idea to establish and agree on specific steps, if possible.  The clawback agreement should also clearly define the procedure to be followed if assertion of privilege is disputed.

Because of FRE 502, if a clawback agreement is incorporated into a protective order entered by the court early in the case, it ensures court approval of the process in case there are disagreements and is binding on the parties, including third parties.  If you can’t agree on the terms of the clawback agreement with the opposing party early in the case and establishing the protection that it affords is important, you may need to file a motion with the court to get a clawback order entered.

So, what do you think?  Do your cases typically include a court-filed clawback agreement?  Have those agreements ever been used to protect inadvertently disclosed privileged information?  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.

Plaintiffs Should Pay for Extensive Discovery Prior to Class Certification – eDiscovery Case Law
 

Have you ever joined a health club, then later tried to cancel your membership?  Did the health club make it easy to do so?  If not, then this case is for you.

In Boeynaems v. LA Fitness International, LLC, No. 10-2326, 2012 U.S. Dist. (E.D. Pa. Aug. 16, 2012), Pennsylvania District Judge Michael Baylson held that “where (1) class certification is pending and (2) the plaintiffs have asked for very extensive discovery, compliance with which will be very extensive, that absent compelling equitable circumstances to the contrary, the plaintiffs should pay for the discovery they seek . . . . Where the burden of discovery expense is almost entirely on the defendant, principally because the plaintiffs seek class certification, then the plaintiffs should share the costs.”

This case emerged from two separate claims filed by plaintiffs who claimed they “encountered deception and breaches concerning their desire to terminate their membership” with the national gym chain LA Fitness. The two cases were consolidated, and the plaintiffs were seeking class certification so that other plaintiffs could join the suit.

After recounting the discovery history between the parties, Judge Baylson noted that this case arose because of an unresolved dispute, including who should bear the cost of continued discovery. To produce ESI requested by the plaintiffs, LA Fitness approximated it would cost the company hundreds of thousands of additional dollars. LA Fitness had already incurred expenses for discovery tasks previously undertaken, including the review of thousands of e-mails, review of “(1) over 500,000 Member Notes from five states for 30 months looking for certain terms, (2) over 1,000 boxes of cancellation requests, of which Plaintiffs reviewed only 70 boxes, (3) over 19,000 pages of documents, and (4) an electronic search of over 32,000 e-mails, maintained by five custodians.” Moreover, LA Fitness asserted that its review of “a sampling of these Member Notes has exhibited only an extremely small proportion with any evidence probative of Plaintiffs’ claims.”

Judge Baylson pointed out that as a result of the extensive review already undertaken by LA Fitness, the plaintiffs had already “already amassed, mostly at Defendant’s expense, a very large set of documents that may be probative as to the class action issue.” In fairness, Judge Baylson concluded that the costs should now shift to the plaintiffs: “In other words, given the large amount of information defendant has already provided, plaintiffs need to assess the value of additional discovery for their class action motion. If plaintiffs conclude that additional discovery is not only relevant, but important to proving that a class should be certified, then plaintiffs should pay for that additional discovery from this date forward, at least until the class action determination is made.” Also, “if the plaintiffs have confidence in their contention that the court should certify the class, then the plaintiffs should have no objection to making an investment.” Moreover, Judge Baylson noted its counsel could afford the investment, as the plaintiffs were represented by “the very successful and well-regarded Philadelphia firm of Berger & Montague. . . . If the Berger & Montague firm believes that this case is meritorious, it has the financial ability to make the investment in discovery.”

Therefore, for production of any requested documents going forward, the plaintiffs were found to have the responsibility for bearing the costs.

So, what do you think?  Should the plaintiffs pay for additional discovery?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case Summary Source: Applied Discovery (free subscription required).  For eDiscovery news and best practices, check out the Applied Discovery Blog here.

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.

Another Disclosure of Privileged Documents Fails the Five Factor Test – eDiscovery Case Law
 

In Inhalation Plastics, Inc. v. Medex Cardio-Pulmonary, Inc., 2:07-CV-116 (N.D. Ohio), Ohio Magistrate Judge Norah McCann King found that the defendant had waived the attorney-client privilege was waived for 347 emails inadvertently produced, because they failed all factors in the five factor test to determine whether the inadvertent disclosure entitles the producing party to the return of the documents in question.

Background of Inadvertent Disclosure

In a breach of contract lawsuit, the defendant produced 7,500 hard copy pages including 347 pages of emails (4.6% of the total) for which legal personnel were senders or recipients. The defendant did not assert privilege on any of the 347 pages of emails until the plaintiff sought to depose those legal personnel. As a result of the defendant seeking to assert privilege on those emails, the plaintiff filed a motion for a determination that the documents are not privileged and submitted them for in camera review.

Five Factor Test

Noting that the producing party has the burden to prove that the disclosure of privileged documents was truly inadvertent, Judge King referenced the now popular five factor test to determine whether an inadvertent disclosure entitles the producing party to have the documents returned, as follows:

“(1) the reasonableness of precautions taken in view of the extent of document production, (2) the number of inadvertent disclosures, (3) the magnitude of the disclosure, (4) any measures taken to mitigate the damage of the disclosures, and (5) the overriding interests of justice.”

Analysis of Factors

With regard to the first factor, despite the fact that the defendant claimed that this production “was reviewed by several layers of attorneys who isolated the privileged documents and prepared for electronic production in the same way” as their previous productions, Judge King noted that the defendant did not specify “who reviewed the production, what steps were taken to review the documents for privilege or whether the production was different in form from prior productions” and noted that no privilege log was produced.  As a result, Judge King found that the defendant failed the first factor.

With regard to the second factor, Judge King compared the rate of disclosure of privileged documents in this case (4.6% of the total) to two other cases where privilege was also waived (134 out of 10,085 pages and 93 documents out of 15,000 documents respectively) and found the number of disclosures to be “relatively high”, so the defendant failed the second factor.

Regarding the third factor, the fact that the documents appeared to be relevant to the plaintiff's claims and they attempted to use them in depositions caused the defendant to fail the third factor.

On the fourth factor, the defendant did immediately invoke privilege when it discovered that the documents had been inadvertently produced.  However, they did not follow the procedure in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(5)(B), which requires:

“If information produced in discovery is subject to a claim of privilege . . . the party making the claim may notify any party that received the information of the claim and the basis for it. After being notified, a party . . . may promptly present the information to the court under seal for a determination of the claim. The producing party must preserve the information until the claim is resolved.”

As Judge King noted, “Medex did not identify any particular documents covered by the privilege, did not provide a proper privilege log and, beyond conclusory statements, Medex did not state a basis for the claimed privilege.”  So, they failed the fourth factor.

At this point, if this was a boxing match, it would be stopped.  In granting the plaintiff’s motion, Judge King stated: “To summarize, the Court finds that Medex did not take reasonable precautions to protect its privileged information, the number of documents disclosed is significant, no privilege log was provided at the time of disclosure, the contents of some of the documents may be relevant to the heart of the dispute, and Medex made insufficient attempts to mitigate its damage even after it learned of the disclosure.”

So, what do you think?  What do you to ensure your firm will pass the five factor test for inadvertent disclosures of privileged documents?  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 Daily is Two Years Old Today!
 

It’s hard to believe that it has been two years ago today since we launched the eDiscoveryDaily blog.  Now that we’ve hit the “terrible twos”, is the blog going to start going off on rants about various eDiscovery topics, like Will McAvoy in The Newsroom?   Maybe.  Or maybe not.  Wouldn’t that be fun!

As we noted when recently acknowledging our 500th post, we have seen traffic on our site (from our first three months of existence to our most recent three months) grow an amazing 442%!  Our subscriber base has nearly doubled in the last year alone!  We now have nearly seven times the visitors to the site as we did when we first started.  We continue to appreciate the interest you’ve shown in the topics and will do our best to continue to provide interesting and useful eDiscovery news and analysis.  That’s what this blog is all about.  And, in each post, we like to ask for you to “please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic”, so we encourage you to do so to make this blog even more useful.

We also want to thank the blogs and publications that have linked to our posts and raised our public awareness, including Pinhawk, The Electronic Discovery Reading Room, Unfiltered Orange, Litigation Support Blog.com, Litigation Support Technology & News, Ride the Lightning, InfoGovernance Engagement Area, Learn About E-Discovery, Alltop, Law.com, Justia Blawg Search, Atkinson-Baker (depo.com), ABA Journal, Complex Discovery, Next Generation eDiscovery Law & Tech Blog and any other publication that has picked up at least one of our posts for reference (sorry if I missed any!).  We really appreciate it!

We like to take a look back every six months at some of the important stories and topics during that time.  So, here are some posts over the last six months you may have missed.  Enjoy!

We talked about best practices for issuing litigation holds and how issuing the litigation hold is just the beginning.

By the way, did you know that if you deleted a photo on Facebook three years ago, it may still be online?

We discussed states (Delaware, Pennsylvania and Florida) that have implemented new rules for eDiscovery in the past few months.

We talked about how to achieve success as a non-attorney in a law firm, providing quality eDiscovery services to your internal “clients” and how to be an eDiscovery consultant, and not just an order taker, for your clients.

We warned you that stop words can stop your searches from being effective, talked about how important it is to test your searches before the meet and confer and discussed the importance of the first 7 to 10 days once litigation hits in addressing eDiscovery issues.

We told you that, sometimes, you may need to collect from custodians that aren’t there, differentiated between quality assurance and quality control and discussed the importance of making sure that file counts add up to what was collected (with an example, no less).

By the way, did you know the number of pages in a gigabyte can vary widely and the same exact content in different file formats can vary by as much as 16 to 20 times in size?

We provided a book review on Zubulake’s e-Discovery and then interviewed the author, Laura Zubulake, as well.

BTW, eDiscovery Daily has had 150 posts related to eDiscovery Case Law since the blog began.  Fifty of them have been in the last six months.

P.S. – We still haven't missed a business day yet without a post.  Yes, we are crazy.

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: Twitter Loses Appeal in People v. Harris
 

As reported in the Gibbons E-Discovery Law Alert blog, Twitter filed an appeal of the trial court’s decision in People v. Harris with the Appellate Division, First Department in New York, arguing that Twitter users have the right to quash subpoenas pursuant to Twitter’s terms of service agreement as well as because defendants’ constitutional rights are implicated by a government-issued subpoena to a third party.  Unfortunately for Twitter, it didn’t take long for the appellate court panel to rule, as they denied Twitter’s motion for a stay of enforcement of the Trial Court’s order to produce Malcolm Harris’s tweets last week.

Attempts to Quash the Subpoena Fail

Back in April, Harris, an Occupy Wall Street activist facing criminal charges, tried to quash a subpoena seeking production of his Tweets and his Twitter account user information in his New York criminal case.  That request was rejected, so Twitter then sought to quash the subpoena themselves, claiming that the order to produce the information imposed an “undue burden” on Twitter and even forced it to “violate federal law”.

Then, on June 30, New York Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. ruled that Twitter must produce tweets and user information of Harris, noting: “If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. There is no proprietary interest in your tweets, which you have now gifted to the world. This is not the same as a private email, a private direct message, a private chat, or any of the other readily available ways to have a private conversation via the internet that now exist…Those private dialogues would require a warrant based on probable cause in order to access the relevant information.”  Judge Sciarrino indicated that his decision was “partially based on Twitter's then terms of service agreement”, which was subsequently modified to add the statement “You Retain Your Right To Any Content You Submit, Post Or Display On Or Through The Service.”

Twitter Continues to Fight Ruling

After the ruling, the New York District Attorney filed an order for Twitter to show cause as to why they should not be held in contempt for failure to produce the tweets. Twitter responded by seeking the stay of enforcement pending the appeal.  Last week, Twitter was given a deadline by the Trial Court during a hearing on the District Attorney’s motion to produce Harris’s information by Friday September 14 or face a finding of contempt. Judge Sciarrino even went so far as to warn Twitter that he would review their most recent quarterly financial statements in determining the appropriate financial penalty if Twitter did not obey the order.

So, what do you think?  With the appeal denied, will Twitter finally produce the plaintiff’s information?  What impact does this case have on future subpoenas of Twitter user information?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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