Electronic Discovery and Computer Forensics Case List - Kroll Ontrack

defendants at a cost of more than $100,000. After this paper production, the defendant requested
these same documents be produced electronically because the printed copies lacked metadata
and the electronic files could be more easily searched. The district court granted the request. The
third-party defendants then hired a consultant to categorize the disks and redact privileged
documents, incurring an additional $182,595.47 in costs. The court declined to award any of the
costs relating to the 19 disks.
� Portis v. City of Chicago, 2004 WL 1535854 (N.D. Ill. July 7, 2004). In response to a federal civil
rights class action lawsuit, the city moved to compel discovery of a document database prepared
by the plaintiffs’ attorneys. The city had previously rejected the plaintiff’s proposal to work jointly on
assembling the costly and time-consuming database containing arrest reports deemed relevant to
the lawsuit. In response to the city’s motion, the plaintiffs, who had spent more than $90,000 to
compile the database, claimed that the database was protected as attorney work product. Although
the court agreed that the database contained attorney work product, it determined the database
was neither selective nor revealing enough to constitute opinion work product. The court further
declared the city had a “substantial need for the information” and “the amount of time and money
the City would have to expend to compile a similar database from scratch warrants a finding of
undue hardship.” As such, the court granted the city’s motion to compel the database as long as
the city reimbursed the plaintiffs for half of the costs associated with compiling the database. See
also Portis v. City of Chicago, 347 F.Supp.2d 573 (N.D. Ill. 2004) (The court calculated database
expenses based on the number of hours spent creating the database multiplied by hourly billing
rates).
� Tempco Elec. Heater Corp. v. Temperature Eng’g Co. 2004 WL 1254134 (N.D.Ill. Jun. 3, 2004),
vacated and rev’d in part, Case No. 02 C 3572 (Jun. 29, 2004). In response to the plaintiff’s claims
of trademark infringement, breach of contract, and misappropriation of trade secrets, the defendant
moved for partial summary judgment arguing that the plaintiff presented no evidence to support its
claims. In support of its motion, the defendant submitted findings by a computer company, who
inspected the defendant’s computers and determined that no remnants of the plaintiff’s confidential
database existed on the defendant’s computers. Arguing that the court should deny the summary
judgment motion, the plaintiff declared that the computer company had performed a minimal
inspection and that a more complete computer forensic investigation might have revealed evidence
of the database. The court granted the defendant’s partial summary judgment motion declaring that
the plaintiff “has the burden of proof, and therefore the responsibility to conduct a thorough
investigation. [The plaintiff] cannot simply sit back and complain about the inadequacy and/or bias
of [the defendant’s] inspection efforts.” The plaintiff appealed this decision claiming testimony from
one of the defendant’s employees revealed the defendant did not remove all copies of a computer
program at issue from its computers as it claimed it did. Finding this established enough evidence
to overcome summary judgment, the court vacated and reversed its original summary judgment
finding.
� In re 3817 W. West End, First Floor Chicago, Illinois 60621, 2004 WL 1380272 (N.D. Ill. May
27, 2004). In a case involving tax fraud, the government asked the court for permission to seize
and search a home computer hard drive and disks for evidence. Although the court authorized
seizure of the computer, it conditioned the search upon the government submitting a search
protocol, outlining the search methods that it would use in order to ensure that irrelevant, private
documents were excluded from the investigation. The government objected to the court’s order
asserting that the court could not regulate the manner in which the computer was searched. In a
subsequent ex parte proceeding, the court rejected the government’s claim, declaring that a
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