Electronic Discovery and Computer Forensics Case List - Kroll Ontrack

electronic discovery would be produced as TIFF images and not in a native file format.
Furthermore, producing native e-mail files would increase the risk of privileged information being
disclosed since native files cannot be redacted. The court reasoned that the prior production of emails
was not a deliberate attempt by the defendant but the result of an agreement between the
parties. The court held the plaintiffs failed to give an adequate reason to compel the native e-mail
production and denied their motions to produce native e-mails. See also Williams v. Sprint/United
Mgmt. Co., 2006 WL 1867478 (D. Kan. July 1, 2006).
� Thompson v. Jiffy Lube Int’l, 2006 WL 3388502 (D. Kan. Nov. 21, 2006). In a fraudulent sales
practices case, plaintiffs’ requested e-mail from over 450 managers of the defendant’s vehicle
service stores. The plaintiffs provided several search terms to narrow the relevant e-mail search
and stated that production would “only” cost the defendant $600,000. The court denied the motion
because production of every manager’s e-mail with common search terms would be too
burdensome and too costly for the defendant. Some of the search terms included words such as:
services, customers and dollars. Although the motion was denied the court hinted that e-mail could
be compelled if the plaintiffs narrowed the scope of the inquiry.
� Semsroth v. City of Wichita, 2006 WL 3913444 (D. Kan. Nov. 15, 2006). In a gender
discrimination case, the defendant brought a cost-sharing motion for discovery costs associated
with producing e-mail from 117 employees, as requested by the plaintiff. The e-mail was only
stored on disaster relief backup tapes. The defendant had already spent $20,000 in producing
electronic documents from their backup tapes and would have to purchase additional software to
produce the remaining e-mail. The plaintiff argued that the defendant should incur all of the costs
because they chose to store the e-mail in an inaccessible format. The court held that the defendant
should incur all of the discovery costs. It noted that the costs already incurred are irrelevant to a
cost-shifting analysis because “the majority of those expenses do not directly relate to the
restoration and search of the backup tape.” Furthermore, the court noted its power under the
amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to rule on discovery that was overly broad.
The court ordered the plaintiff to reduce the number of e-mail accounts to 50 employees instead of
117, and it also removed several generic search terms from defendant’s list of search terms and
reduced the total number to 10 specific terms.
� Johnson v. Kraft Foods, 2006 WL 3302684 (D. Kan. Nov. 14, 2006). The plaintiffs motioned the
court to compel the defendant to produce electronic data, including electronic databases, regarding
its employees. The defendant objected generally to several discovery requests made by the
plaintiffs, claiming that the discovery requests where overbroad, duplicative, and vague. Notably,
the defendant objected to the plaintiffs’ definitions of electronic discovery terms (such as “electronic
database” and “personnel related data”) as vague and ambiguous despite the fact that the
plaintiffs’ provided detailed definitions of each term. The defendant argued that the different
attorneys examining the scope and adequacy of the requests will view the electronic data terms
differently and produce inconsistent discovery results. The court overruled the defendant’s
objections and identified several credible sources to access an accurate legal definition of
electronic discovery terms, including the Kansas electronic discovery guideline practices, the
Sedona Conference guidelines, and caselaw.
� Williams v. Sprint/United Mgmt. Co., 2006 WL 1867478 (D. Kan. July 1, 2006). The court
conducted an in camera review of 65 documents inadvertently disclosed by the defendant to the
plaintiffs. The court found the documents -- spreadsheets containing statistical information -- were
created at the request of the defendant’s attorneys for the purpose of obtaining legal advice, and
were protected by attorney-client privilege. In reaching its conclusion, the court considered several
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