Crane on Law by James Crane
"Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind." - Sir Francis Bacon
In Case You Missed It: Court Demands Parties Answer Questions About Spoliation
Published in Spoliation, In Case You Missed it, FRCP, EDiscovery, Case Law Update by James Crane | Comment (0)
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
In Case You Missed It: Production in Paper is Not Reasonably Usable Form
Published in In Case You Missed it, FRCP, EDiscovery by James Crane | Comment (0)
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 Case You Missed It: Adverse Inference Instruction in CA Dist Ct
Published in In Case You Missed it, Evidence, EDiscovery, Case Law Update by James Crane | Comment (0)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
In Case You Missed It: LotusNotes and Accessibility
Published in Litigation, In Case You Missed it, FRCP, Evidence, Case Law Update, Accessibility by James Crane | Comment (0)In Parkdale Am., L.L.C. v. Travelers Cas. and Sur. Co. of Am., Inc. (2007 WL 4165247), the Western District Court in North Carolina decided that relevant emails in LotusNotes format should be produced despite Plaintiffs' objections that it would cost $20,000 to convert them to a searchable format.
The Court found that because the emails were from a key custodian, and the amount at stake dwarfed
In Case You Missed It: Failure to Preserve and Produce E-mail Supports Adverse Inference Instruction
Published in In Case You Missed it, Case Law Update by James Crane | Comment (0)In Connor v. Sun Trust Bank, the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Georgia held that an adverse inference instruction is appropriate when an employer did not take the steps to properly preserve and produce an email relating to an FMLA claim by a former employee. The key players were the former employee, Connor, the defendant employer, Sun Trust, and the supervisor of the former employee. At issue in the case was a relevant February 12th email written by the supervisor, which detailed the decision to terminate Connor. It was not properly preserved and never produced. When Connor discovered the February 12th email by another means, they filed a Motion for Sanctions for Destruction of Evidence. Senior District Judge Robert J. Vining, Jr. granted the plaintiff’s Motion after considering the following five-factor analysis as applied in the 11th Circuit:
James Crane is an attorney, consultant and author with extensive experience in e-discovery management. In his practice, James has defended corporate clients in a variety of complex matters including multi-jurisdictional class actions and internal corporate and government regulatory investigations.