Evidence Preservation: Handling the Issues in New York and New Jersey
On August 5, 2024, District Judge Amit P. Mehta (U.S. District Court, District of Columbia) ruled in United States v. Google LLC that Google violated §2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing the internet search engine market....more
Implementing and enforcing appropriate legal holds is essential to preventing the destruction of data related to current or anticipated litigation and avoiding inadvertent spoliation claims. Depending on the nature of the...more
Few terms make litigators shudder like the dreaded spoliation; and for good reason. The consequences of a company’s failure to preserve evidence that might be relevant in prospective litigation can be severe. What many...more
A review of recent case law by EDRM Guardian Partner Exterro’s E-Discovery Case Law Project - Five or so years ago, legal professionals were hearing about “the end of sanctions.” Changes in the Federal Rules of Civil...more
In DR Distributors LLC v. 21 Century Smoking, Inc, v. CB Distributors, Inc. and Carlos Bengos, 2021 WL 185082, No. 12 CV 50324 (1/19/2021), Judge Johnston of the Northern District of Illinois, granted Plaintiff’s motion for...more
Video surveillance is ubiquitous today and often sought in connection with injuries or litigation. As a result, courts are increasingly presented with disputes relating to the preservation and production of surveillance...more
Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e)(2), imposition of the most severe sanctions for failure to preserve relevant electronically stored information — a presumption that the information lost was unfavorable, an...more
This is what it sounds like, when sanctions are granted. In March 2019, a federal judge in Minnesota sanctioned Defendants for their failure to preserve text messages in a copyright infringement suit brought in part by the...more
Two Recent Cases Highlight the Spoliation Thresholds in Rule 37(e) - With the 2015 FRCP amendments quickly nearing a half-decade in existence, case-law continues to define how these rules are upheld in court, especially...more
The extent to which a loss scene can be altered before adversaries can legitimately cry spoliation has long been a mysterious battleground in the world of subrogation. In the case of In re Xterra Constr., LLC, No....more
Whether we like it or not, a reality of today’s world is that often important business is conducted by text messages. And so, when it is time to issue a litigation hold notice, you must include an instruction to preserve text...more
You may have read my colleague Starling Underwood’s post on two recent Second Circuit decisions discussing sanctions for spoliation. If you have not, I encourage you to read it here. The two cases Starling addressed, one...more
Cell phones have been around for a long time, but preserving the data they contain for discovery purposes is still often overlooked or avoided due to expense and inconvenience. Two recent decisions highlight the importance of...more
Georgia courts have finally claimed the same legal standard applies to plaintiffs and defendants when courts are deciding when the duty to preserve relevant evidence arises. But the application of the standard to plaintiffs...more
In Amerisure Ins. Co. v. Rodriguez, 43 Fla. L. Weekly 2225 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App., Sept. 26, 2018), the Third District Court of Appeals of Florida addressed whether a third-party spoliation claim should be litigated and tried...more
In Amica Mutual Ins. Co. v. BrassCraft Mfg., Co., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88986 (D.R.I. May 29, 2018), the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island addressed the question of whether the defendant was so...more
...For those of us who practice regularly in the ediscovery realm, the December 1, 2015 amendment to Rule 37(e) was a much needed game-changer. In simple terms, amended Rule 37(e) eliminated the risk of the severest sanctions...more
On January 23, 2018, the Northern District of Indiana issued a decision that clarifies what constitutes spoliation of evidence under Indiana law. In Arcelormittal Ind. Harbor LLC v. Amex Nooter, LLC, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS...more
The ninth edition of The E-Discovery Digest focuses on recent decisions addressing the scope and application of the attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine, spoliation, and discovery responses....more
It was a tragedy. The 1977 plane crash that killed Ronnie Van Zant and Steven Gaines almost ended the band Lynyrd Skynyrd forever. In the wake of the crash, the survivors swore an oath never again to perform as “Lynyrd...more
Late last month, in Klipsch Grp., Inc. v. ePRO E-Commerce Ltd., the Second Circuit affirmed a $2.7 million sanctions award against defendant ePRO after repeated instances of discovery misconduct. Finding that the district...more
The eighth edition of The E-Discovery Digest focuses on recent decisions addressing the scope and application of the attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine, spoliation, and discovery responses....more
The seventh edition of The E-Discovery Digest focuses on recent decisions addressing the scope and application of the attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine, spoliation, and discovery responses....more
In a recent unpublished case, the Superior Court of New Jersey held that the Plaintiff in a CERCLA case had committed spoliation when, during the course of the remedial activity, it disposed of various contaminated materials....more
Needless to say, a finding of exceptionality under 35 U.S.C. § 285 can have crippling consequences. Just ask Rembrandt Technologies, LP, which recently was slapped with an order to pay the prevailing defendants in a...more