On July 21, 2014, the United States District Court, District of Nevada, fined Plaintiff and her counsel for deletion of social media postings. The magistrate judge had granted in part Defendant’s Motions for Spoliation Sanctions against the Plaintiff for intentionally destroying text messages and Facebook posts that contradicted Plaintiff’s claims. Plaintiff moved to reconsider the […]
From the Article: “E-discovery practice continues to evolve, resulting in increasing complexity and, with it, greater risks. Recent cases and developments offer new insights and interpretations of existing issues, while new practices and technology, such as cloud computing, intelligent review technology, mobile devices/BYOD, and overpreservation add new challenges”. The full text can be downloaded at http://www.huroncon….
The author discusses how sanctions motions based on unsupported claims of spoliation create expensive sideshows that distract from the merits. And sometimes – although perhaps not frequently enough according to author – baseless and abusive motions are punished. Mentioned case law Smith v. Westchester County Dept. of Corrections, No. 07-CIV-1803 (SDNY) Residential Funding Corp. v. […]
New York Law Journal, Vol 250, No. 65 (October 1, 2013) Authors discuss a trend of courts determining the propriety of sanctions for spoliation of electronically stored evidence with reference to the proposed amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e) and the implications of the proposed changes. The full text can be downloaded at […]
3 St. Mary’s Journal of Legal Malpractice & Ethics 204, 225, 228-29 (2013) The full text is available at: http://www.stmaryslawjournal…
On January 7, 2010, the United States District Court, Southern District of California, reversed the decision to sanction outside attorneys for failing to produce tens of thousands of key documents. In 2008, the Court had issued a Sanctions Order against Qualcomm and its counsel for “intentionally with[holding] tens of thousands of documents that defendant [Broadcom] […]
In an action concerning environmental cleanup responsibilities, the plaintiff [Consolidated] contended that the defendant’s designation of only four employees to maintain a litigation hold was inadequate. Considering the lack of precedent within the Fifth Circuit as to standards for preservation of electronic evidence and sanctions for spoliation of electronic evidence, the Court held that plaintiff […]
In the Introduction section of the opinion, the court provided a brief background of the case, the motion at hand, and the issues for consideration: “This is the fifth written opinion in this case, a relatively routine employment discrimination dispute in which discovery has now lasted over two years. Laura Zubulake is once again moving to […]
From the Opinion: “This opinion addresses both the scope of a litigant’s duty to preserve electronic documents and the consequences of a failure to preserve documents that fall within the scope of that duty.” After UBS was ordered to produce documents from certain backup tapes, the parties discovered that certain tapes were missing. The court […]