Welcome to e-Lessons Learned

e-Lessons Learned, an educational blog about e-discovery, technology, and human error, features insightful content authored primarily by law students from across the country. e-Lessons Learned designs its posts to appeal to a broad spectrum of readers.

Each blog post: (a) identifies cases that address technology mishaps (either through negligence, ethical lapses in judgment, too much reliance on outside counsel and vendors, or fraud); (b) exposes the specific conduct that caused a problem; (c) explains how and why the conduct was improper; and (d) offers suggestions on how to learn from these mistakes and prevent similar ones from reoccurring.

Are you new to the e-discovery world? Visit our signature feature, e-Discovery Origins: Zubulake, designed to give readers a primer on the e-discovery movement through blog posts about the Zubulake series of court opinions which helped form the foundation for e-discovery. As one leading e-discovery guru put it, “if you are a novice to e-discovery case law, this is a must read.”

Interested students may apply for the opportunity to write for e-Lessons Learned by filling out the simple application, here.

E-discovery is a constantly developing topic in the legal world, and the word, “world,” should be taken literally.  Across the globe, different nations and their legal system are formulating new rules to tackle new discovery issues that can arise almost as quickly as new technology and means of communication can develop.  The only problem with this, however, is that different nations are addressing their e-discovery issues with different solutions.  This problem usually rears its ugly head when one of the parties in a lawsuit is a multinational company.  What is a British company supposed to do when it’s sued in an American because of a foul-up by its French Subsidiary?  Do they supply all of the e-discovery materials required by American courts?  What if e-discovery that the American court requires no longer exists because it never needed to be stored in the first place by   French or British?

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In Newman v. Borders, Inc., the United States District Court for the District of Columbia held that because plaintiff failed to notify defendant in a deposition notice that questions in a deposition would pertain to the defendant book’s email policies (or any electronically stored information (ESI) in general), plaintiff was not entitled to take further depositions despite the designated witness’s lack of knowledge regarding that subject matter.  However, the Court further held that due to both parties’ failures to try hard enough to resolve the dispute and because discovery regarding document retention policies is a legitimate request, defendant was nonetheless ordered to answer specific questions posed by the Court regarding its email retention policies.

The lesson here is twofold:  If you are going to depose witnesses regarding ESI, you must put the other party on notice of the scope of the deposition testimony being sought, or risk losing the opportunity to conduct further depositions.  But regardless of whether you are the party who asks or the party who answers, you must be sure to make every reasonable effort to resolve discovery disputes. Continue reading »

It happens all the time.  To expedite the litigation process, parties reach agreements as to the scope and timing of electronic discovery.  After all, who wants to delay litigation with the lengthy and expensive review of a universe of documents when you can significantly shrink that universe without compromising the quality of your production by agreeing on a set of specific custodians?

The parties in Wixon v. Wyndham Resort Development Corp. reached an agreement that by a specific date, Wyndham would produce electronically stored information (“ESI”) held by specific custodians that matched specific search terms.  But what happened when, after the deadline, Wyndham revealed a stash of ESI found in a shared directory of a hard drive not allocated to a specific custodian?  Does a document not directly linked to a specific custodian automatically become “nonresponsive”? Continue reading »

Is having an anti-privacy policy enough to monitor employer-issued Blackberries® and laptops?

According to the 9^th circuit, the answer is a NO!

In Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Co., 529 F.3d 892 (9^th Cir. 2008), the City of Ontario Police Department (“OPD”) had a formal policy governing city-owned computers and associated equipment that limited its use to City related business.  It also warned that the users should have no expectation of privacy or confidentiality when using these resources.  When the OPD issued pagers to its employees, it clarified that the policy also applied to the use of pagers.  Under the OPD’s contract with its service provider, each pager was allotted 25,000 characters, after which it incurred overage charges.

Quon’s supervisor informally allowed employees to pay for their overages thereby avoiding the need to audit the messages.  Accordingly, employees paid their share when they exceeded the character limit and avoided an audit.  Quon’s repeated overages, however, frustrated the supervisor, who pursuant to the formal policy requested an audit to determine if the exceedances were due to city related business.  The audit revealed that many of the messages were personal in nature and often sexually explicit.  It also revealed that at least in one instance the pagers were used to undermine a narcotics investigation. Continue reading »

On June 29, 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law California’s Electronic Discovery Act, which is effective immediately.  For the most part, the recent eDiscovery amendments to the California Code of Civil Procedure track the federal rules.  For example, similar to the federal rules, the California rules use a broad definition of “electronically stored information,” allow requesting parties to inspect, copy and sample ESI, and require both parties to meet and confer regarding ESI discovery issues early in the litigation (in CA this must be done 45 days before a case management conference compared with 21 days under the federal rules).

However, the California amendments depart from the federal rules in a few distinct and important ways.   Continue reading »

Bridgewater, NJ (April 23, 2010) – Fernando Pinguelo, a Member of Norris McLaughlin & Marcus, P.A., appeared as a guest on Fox News Channel’s live web show, The Strategy Room, hosted by Kimberly Guilfolye.  Pinguelo was interviewed about today’s headlines featuring internet abuse, including the Security and Exchange Commission Office of Inspector General’s 5-year investigation that revealed SEC employees and contractors visiting porn sites and viewing sexually explicit pictures using government computers. Ms. Guilfoyle’s guests today also included Richard “Bo” Dietl and Dr. Kathryn Smerling. 

The Strategy Room airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET for a discussion of the day’s top stories, plus a variety of hour-long shows on topics like business, health, technology, and entertainment.

“Casual use of the internet in the workplace is on the rise.  With up-to-the-minute Facebook statuses and Twitter ‘tweets,’ the use of company time for personal internet use has become common place.  This has become so common that it is obvious employees don’t realize their actions can be tracked and saved.  This new breaking story testifies to the fact that many workers don’t realize the implications of their actions online,” said Pinguelo.

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Just because e-discovery is involved does not mean we can disregard the rules applied to traditional discovery.   While we must adapt the way we approach discovery because of advancing technology and the decline of the paper-based world, we must not forget that the spirit behind the rules of discovery apply to all discovery, including e-discovery.

In High Voltage, the plaintiff filed a motion to compel the defendant to search for alternative sources beyond the initial production of documents for the selection of the VAULT mark.  This would involve having the defendant review an additional 1.5 million pages of documents (17 gigabytes) beyond the 1.7 million pages already produced to the plaintiff. Continue reading »

Dead men tell no tales, but their bodies provide enough evidence to paint a graphic picture.  The same is true of deleted files on a computer.  Missing files can carry the inference that the evidence was only destroyed because it would have been damaging to the party responsible.

In Paris Business Products, Inc. v. Genisis Technologies, LLC (“Paris”), Genisis Technologies, LLC, (“Genisis”) was subject to a discovery order requiring it to preserve all relevant data on company-owned computer hard drives.  Despite this order, Genisis’ executive officers allegedly were responsible for: (1) deleting the company hard drives by reformatting them; and (2) physically removing and destroying some hard drives. Continue reading »

Often I am asked if certain arrangements and deals are enforceable without a written contract. Sometimes, I am asked that question with a little bit of layman lawyering as to whether the so called “statute of frauds” (this is an ancient statute that essentially says certain classes of contracts) can cut off a contract claim. First, let me say that the law is blind, but not dumb. If there was a real arrangement oral or otherwise, rarely will a court will simply tell the plaintiff that he/she is without a paddle.

This is due to several major reasons. Continue reading »

Though not related to eDiscovery per se, we at eLessons Learned want to alert Law Students and fellow student bloggers of the National Law Review’s writing competition taking place this month.

The National Law Review (NLR) consolidates practice-oriented legal analysis from a variety of sources for easy access by lawyers, paralegals, law students, business executives, insurance professionals, accountants, compliance officers, human resource managers, and other professionals who wish to better understand specific legal issues relevant to their work.

The NLR Law Student Writing Competition offers law students the opportunity to submit articles for publication consideration on the NLR Web site.  No entry fee is required. Applicants can submit an unlimited number of entries each month.

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