Electronic Discovery and Computer Forensics Case List - Kroll Ontrack

willfulness and bad faith, the court found this case justified the extreme sanctions and granted
dismissal with prejudice.
� Laethem Equip. Co., v. Deere & Co., 2009 WL 3064663 (E.D. Mich. Sept. 21, 2009). In this
ongoing breach of contract dispute, the court adopted the magistrate judge’s report that
recommended denial of the defendant’s motion for sanctions and additional discovery of trial
witnesses. The defendant sought sanctions, arguing the plaintiff failed to produce relevant ESI and
privilege logs before depositions were taken. The plaintiff denied the defendant’s allegations,
arguing the motion for sanctions was intended to "divert attention from [defendant’s] misconduct."
Noting that this motion was a further example of how discovery is now a "black hole" that has the
power to "annihilate the case itself," the magistrate judge recommended denial of the defendant’s
motion, finding the defendant failed to establish its defenses had been "materially prejudiced." The
report further found the defendant failed to demonstrate that it was unable to obtain information it
had a right to seek during depositions, but recommended the court allow an additional opportunity
to depose trial witness not already deposed.
� Sungjin Fo-Ma, Inc. v. Chainworks, Inc., 2009 WL 2022308 (E.D.Mich. July 8, 2009). In this
contract dispute, the defendant moved to compel responses to interrogatories. In regard to several
of the disputed interrogatories, the plaintiff had produced English and nontranslated Korean
language documents under Fed.R.Civ.P. 33, which provides the option to produce business
records in response to an interrogatory provided the burden of ascertaining the answer will be
substantially the same for either party. The court held that the plaintiff’s failure to specify which of
the disclosed documents are responsive to which interrogatories does not satisfy Rule 33’s
specificity requirement. Moreover, the court held that the burden of ascertaining the answers to the
interrogatories was not substantially similar for the parties, noting that the plaintiff can readily refer
to its documents—which it should be familiar with—and extract the information necessary to
provide an English language answer to the defendant’s interrogatories while the translation burden
would be great on the defendant.
� Valeo Elec. Sys., Inc. v. Cleveland Die & Mfg. Co., 2009 WL 1803216 (E.D. Mich. June 17,
2009). In this contract dispute, the defendant moved to compel the plaintiff to organize the data it
produced into the 28 specific categories of the document production request. The plaintiff had
produced more than 270,000 pages of documents in the order that they were found on the hard
drive of each document custodian along with two indices to aid in interpreting and sorting the
documents. The defendant asserted that the plaintiff’s production required it to manually open and
review each file and that the plaintiff had given each file “innocuous” names in order to frustrate the
defendant’s review. Finding the plaintiff had produced the documents as they were kept in the
ordinary course of business, the court determined there was no indication that the documents or
file names were modified by the plaintiff. Accordingly, the court found the plaintiff’s production
satisfied Fed.R.Civ.P. 34 and denied the defendant’s motion, noting that to require more would
impose an unfair burden on the producing party.
� Technical Sales Associates, Inc. v. Ohio Star Forge Co., 2009 U.S. Dist. (E.D.Mich. May 1,
2009). In this sales contract dispute, a third-party forensic examination corporation sought
attorneys’ fees and costs for its defense against an unsuccessful motion for contempt filed by the
defendant. The defendant had moved for contempt arguing that the third party’s disclosure of
findings of spoliation to the plaintiff directly, without noticing the defendant, was a violation of the
stipulated order. The court ruled that the third party had not violated the stipulated order because
the order dealt narrowly with the discovery of actual data and did not govern the discovery of
wrongdoing. The court, however, determined that the third party was not "free from taint" and
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