Courts Increasingly Cognizant of eDiscovery Burdens, Reject “Gotcha” Sanctions Demands Courts are becoming increasingly cognizant of the eDiscovery burdens that the information explosion has placed on organizations. Indeed, the cases from 2012 are piling up in which courts have rejected demands that sanctions be imposed for seemingly reasonable information retention practices. The recent case of [...]

Breaking News: Court Clarifies Duty to Preserve Evidence, Denies eDiscovery Sanctions Motion Against Pfizer It is fortunately becoming clearer that organizations do not need to preserve information until litigation is “reasonably anticipated.” In Brigham Young University v. Pfizer (D. Utah Apr. 16, 2012), the court denied the plaintiff university’s fourth motion for discovery sanctions against [...]

Email Archive Saves the Day, Prevents eDiscovery Sanctions The recent case of Danny Lynn Electrical v. Veolia Es Solid Waste (2012 WL 786843, March 9, 2012) showcases the value of an information archive from a compliance and eDiscovery perspective. In Danny Lynn Electrical the plaintiff sought sanctions against the defendant for the spoliation of electronic [...]

UK Sanctions Order Emphasizes the Importance of Effective eDiscovery Tools The buzz in the eDiscovery world has focused on predictive coding and the related order issued last month in the Da Silva Moore v. Publicis Groupe case. Yet in that order, the Moore court emphasized that predictive coding would not become the exclusive tool for [...]

Simple Mistakes Lead to Discovery Sanctions Against Delta Air Lines              Judge Timothy C. Batten, Sr., of the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, imposed discovery sanctions against Delta Air Lines after it failed to disclose documents contained in backup tapes and hard drives that had been inadvertently overlooked by Delta’s counsel and [...]

Court Imposes Sanctions for Failure to Conduct Reasonable Inquiry and Late Production In re Delta/AirTran Baggage Fee Antitrust Litig., –F. Supp. 2d–, 2012 WL 360509 (N.D. Ga. Feb. 3, 2012) After repeated representations that all responsive documents had been produced, a defendant belatedly discovered and produced an additional 60,000 pages.  Upon plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions, the [...]

All’s “Well” for Halliburton: No Sanctions Result from BP’s Spoliation Claims United States District Judge Carl Barbier recently affirmed Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan’s denial of BP’s motion for spoliation sanctions against Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. BP alleged that Halliburton “intentionally destroyed evidence” and “violated the Court’s orders regarding the production of documents.” For these violations, BP sought [...]

Lester v. Allied Part 2: “Clean Up” of Compromising Social Media Evidence Can Result in Severe Sanctions Though some practitioners might be in denial, the follow-up sanctions orders in Lester v. Allied Concrete Co. et al. dated May 27, 2011 and September 23, 2011 should leave no room for doubt that preservation of social media [...]

Court Grants Cross Motions for Spoliation Sanctions, Imposes Adverse Inference Against Both Parties Patel v. Havana Bar, Restaurant & Catering, No. 10-1383, 2011 WL 6029983 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 5, 2011) In this opinion addressing the parties’ cross motions for sanctions, the court ordered an adverse inference for defendants’ failure to preserve relevant video surveillance footage [...]

Sanctions Ordered for Failure to Adequately “Preserve, Search for, and Collect Potentially Relevant Information” Naaco Materials Handling Group, Inc. v. Lilly Co., No. 11-2415 AV, 2011 WL 5986649 (W.D. Tenn. Nov. 16, 2011) In this case, the court found that defendant “failed to take reasonable steps to preserve, search for, and collect potentially relevant information [...]