Crane on Law by James Crane

The Northern District Court of California found a "troubling picture" when trying to understand how documents were possibly destroyed by a third-party defendant Taishan in Dong Ah Tire & Rubber Co., Ltd. v. Glasforms, Inc., a breach of contract case.

Even after months of discovery, testimony of Taishan's 30(b)(6) witnesses, and court ordered search and production of documents by Taishan, the

So, what happens when a party requests production of relevant electronically stored information, doesn't specify the form of production, and the producing party gives them boxes of paper documents that were converted to PDF and printed out?

The Kansas District Court looked at this issue last month in White v. Graceland Coll. Ctr. for Prof'l. Dev. & Lifelong Learning, Inc., a wrongful termination

In Keithley v. Home Store .com, Inc., a patent infringement case in the Northern District Court of California, the magistrate judge recommended that the District Court give an adverse inference instruction to the jury due to defendants' discovery misconduct described as "among the most egregious" she'd ever seen.

 The bad discovery conduct included:

• False or misleading statements to the

Corporate counsel is always dealing with the challenges of controlling costs and providing their corporate client with the most defensible position.  One question that always comes up is "why shouldn't we just collect our own data?"  It's a good question.  Many corporations have an IT department staffed with talented and available personnel. 

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Aristotle thought that earthquakes were caused by subterranean winds.  OK, so he was a little off, according the USGS - tectonic plate movement simply fell outside his realm of experience.  Like Aristotle, though, many attorneys think their methods are as good as it gets.  What we attorneys have to learn is that there is always room for improvement.  This is especially true with legal technology tools.  Advances in scanning and optical character recognition, and new efficiencies in capturing and organizing digital data allow the technologically astute practitioner to nimbly navigate through a tangled jungle of documents.  This saves the client money and ensures more accurate discovery. 

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Proofpoint has released results from a March 2008 survey of 301 US companies with more than 20,000 employees regarding email and data loss. The highlights from the responses include:

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One of the basic terms you will encounter in computer forensics is MD5. MD5 (message-digest algorithm 5) is the most commonly used cryptographic hash function with a 128-bit hash value and is represented by a 32 digit hexadecimal number. It was designed by MIT professor Ron Rivest in 1991 and first published in 1992. If you have a deep interest in cryptography and computer forensics, check out his site here. He maintains many links to resources and his published works.

In the world of corporate defense, production gaps can turn a winnable case upside down the moment the opposing party switches into discovery attack mode. Any seemingly small error in gathering or producing data invites the spectre of spoliation. If the corporate client is unable to present a detailed explanation and justification for any alleged oversight, sanctions will probably follow.

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Well, IQPC's E-Discovery Conference was a big success. Our discussion was well received, and I gained some important insights from the other speakers and attendees. One of the programs featured Chief US Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck of the Southern District of New York and Chief District Judge James Rosenbaum of the District of Minnesota. Both gentlemen were extremely interesting and tech-savvy, and posed some thought-provoking items.

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The Altep team is heading to Las Vegas next week to attend the IQPC 5 th E-Discovery Conference and present our program entitled "Defending Class Actions Across Multiple Jurisdictions." I will be moderating a talented panel with decades of experience in e-discovery, serial litigation, using technology in large-scale actions. We’ll talk about considerations prior to class action certification, all the way through productions in multiple jurisdictions. We’ll examine best practices for privilege log creation and re-purposing consistent productions to avoid discovery gaps and reduce plaintiff opportunities to allege spoliation.

Many of your have confirmed that you will be there and we’re looking forward to meeting all of you in person!