Electronic Discovery and Computer Forensics Case List - Kroll Ontrack

exposure of trade secrets. Additionally, the court stated that a future review will be completed to
determine attorney client privilege issues.
� Ex parte Vulcan Materials Co., 2008 WL 1838309 (Ala. April 25, 2008). In this breach of contract
litigation, the defendant sought review of an order regarding permissible post-trial discovery in
response to a punitive damages award. The defendant claimed the trial court exceeded its
discretion in denying the motion for a protective order regarding production of e-mail circulated
within the company. Specifically, the defendant claimed because the e-mail sought was created
after the case was filed, it was not relevant to the issue of punitive damages and protected by work
product doctrine. Relying upon Ex parte Cooper Tire & Rubber Co., So.2d (Ala.2007) and the
Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(2)(B), the court directed the trial court to reconsider the defendant’s motion for
a protective order.
� Peacock v. Merrill, 2008 WL 176375 (S.D.Ala. Jan. 17, 2008). In this litigation, the defendants
sought production of electronic tax information, and the plaintiff claimed the motion was moot,
arguing she had already fully produced responsive documents. The defendants sought an exact
replica of a floppy disk to determine if the plaintiff fully complied with the discovery request. Relying
on FRCP 34(b)(i)-(iii), the court ordered production of disk files in native electronic format to ensure
access to all metadata, determining that the date stamps of many of the documents were relevant .
� United States v. King, No. 07-11808 (M.D.Ala. Dec. 14, 2007). In this appeal of a conviction for
transportation of child pornography, the defendant, a civilian contractor at a United States Air Force
base, sought a motion to suppress evidence obtained from his computer hard drive as violating of
his fourth amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The government
obtained evidence from the defendant’s hard drive via a “shared” drive by an airman searching for
music files. Upon discovery of the pornographic images, the airman notified a computer specialist
who accessed the drive in the same manner. Subsequently, the specialist notified an investigator
who obtained a search warrant and seized the defendant’s computer. Determining that data saved
on a hard drive connected to a network belongs to a network administrator, the court held that the
defendant had no legitimate expectation of privacy for files located and accessible via a shared
network drive, and therefore denied the defendant’s motion to suppress.
� Braxton v. Farmer’s Ins. Group, 209 F.R.D. 651 (N.D.Ala. 2002). In a class action brought under
the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the plaintiffs sought e-mails from non-party individual insurance
agents of the defendant’s insurance company. The defendant objected, claiming that enforcement
of the subpoena would subject the agents to an undue burden. The court refused to require the
non-party insurance agents to engage in the task of “combing through their e-mail files and other
records in search of the documents sought by the plaintiff.” The court ordered the defendant to
locate and produce relevant e-mails, newsletters, and other correspondence that it sent to its
agents.
� Ex Parte Wal-mart, Inc., 809 So.2d 818 (Ala. 2001). In a personal injury case, the plaintiff sought
discovery of Wal-mart’s electronic database containing customer incident reports and employee
accident review forms. The appellate court held that discovery order should have been restricted to
falling-merchandise incidents with geographic and temporal limits set forth by the trial court.
Florida
� Indep. Mktg. Group, Inc. v. Keen, 2012 WL 207032 (M.D. Fla. Jan. 24, 2012). In this discovery
dispute, the defendant brought a motion to compel the production of ESI in a reasonably usable
format after the plaintiff produced PDFs that compiled hundreds of documents without any
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