Proposed FRCP Changes: Effect on eDiscovery, RIM & IG (CLE)
[Legal Perspective] When Is It NOT Okay to Delete Your Social Media Account?
The Growing Role of Social Media in Litigation and How to Prepare for It
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
[Editor’s Note: This article was first published April 17, 2024 and EDRM is grateful to Tom Paskowitz and Robert Keeling of our Trusted Partner, Sidley, for permission to republish. The opinions and positions are those of the...more
Gener8 LLC v. Castanon, 2022-0246-LWW (Del. Ch. Sept. 29, 2023) - This dispute concerned a non-compete agreement that the plaintiffs alleged the defendant breached by establishing a competing business. The defendant denied...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
This isn’t the 1990s: Email isn’t a new technology. By now, we all know that our work emails aren’t private, and most of us exercise some discretion in deciding what to “put in writing” in our business communications. We’ve...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
A potential pitfall in navigating a litigated, or potentially litigated claim, is not properly preserving evidence. Attorneys and parties must preserve potentially relevant evidence when they know or should know, that a claim...more
In 2003 Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote “once a party reasonably anticipates litigation, it must suspend its routine document retention/destruction policy and put in place a 'litigation hold' to ensure the preservation of...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
Parties should think twice before posting potential evidence on social media, as the Plaintiff in Guarisco v. Boh Brothers Construction learned recently. The Eastern District of Louisiana imposed sanctions on Plaintiff for...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
Is eDiscovery Existing in a Post-Sanctions World? The short (and obvious) answer is no. Rule 37(e) isn’t going anywhere. But recent case law indicates a trend where sanctions seem to be harder to come by, which may play...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
Here’s one that will light your fire. Martinez v. Triple S Props., No. 6:17-03195-CV-RK, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 166357 (W.D. Mo. Sep. 27, 2018) is a proposed class action against Triple S Properties (“Defendant), an owner...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
The Ohio Supreme Court has issued an important decision limiting a party’s ability to pursue an independent tort claim for spoliation of evidence. Ohio law excludes tort claims for negligent spoliation of evidence, but...more