Electronic Discovery and Computer Forensics Case List - Kroll Ontrack

equirement that data be produced in a reasonably accessible format, the court denied the
defendants’ motion as the defendants provided no materials to demonstrate that their rebuttal
experts were unable to access or review the data.
� Klayman v. Freedom’s Watch, Inc., 2008 WL 5111293 (S.D.Fla. Dec. 4, 2008). In this litigation,
the defendants moved the court to tax the costs of their electronic discovery collection to the
plaintiff. The defendants requested the plaintiff pay the $150,000 they spent for expenses incurred
in hiring an outside firm to collect their electronic documents, including travel expenses. Applying
28 USC §1920, which provides for the taxation of costs for “fees for exemplification and copies of
papers necessarily obtained for use in the case,” the court denied the motion. The court refused to
tax costs not specifically authorized by the statute, such as the hourly costs of collection at issue
here.
� Goodbys Creek, LLC v. Arch Ins. Co., 2008 WL 4279693 (M.D.Fla. Sept. 15, 2008). In this
breach of contract litigation, the plaintiff sought production of documents that it alleged were
relevant to prove its claim that the defendant violated its duty of good faith and fair dealing (the
defendant was the surety for the party that previously entered into a contract with the plaintiff). The
plaintiff requested: all documents and electronic documents that reflect all communications
between the defendant and the third party; documents that reflect the defendant’s knowledge of the
third party’s insolvency and inability to perform; and reproduction of documents in their native form
that were previously produced in a TIFF format. The court denied the first request as overbroad,
but granted the second request, finding the sought-after information to be relevant. Despite the
plaintiff’s failure to specify a production format, the court determined the defendant did not comply
with the Advisory Committee Note to Fed.R.Civ.P. 34 when it chose to produce TIFF images. The
court ordered the defendant to reproduce documents in either their native format, another
comparably searchable format or to supply the plaintiff with software for searching the TIFF
images.
� Infinite Energy, Inc. v. Thai Heng Chang, 2008 WL 4098329 (N.D.Fla. Aug. 29, 2008). In this
trade secret litigation, the plaintiff filed a motion to compel production of relevant e-mail and sought
sanctions for defendant’s untruthful representations regarding the e-mail account. The defendant
argued he did not identify the particular Yahoo! account because he could not produce e-mails
from it, claiming they were deleted as a result of his deactivation of the account. Frustrated by the
defendant’s lack of evidence of destruction, the court ordered the defendant to immediately attempt
to obtain and produce e-mails from the Yahoo! account. The court also awarded sanctions against
the defendant, but stayed the determination of which sanctions to impose until a later date.
� St. Cyr v. Flying J, Inc., 2008 WL 2097611 (M.D. Fla. May 16, 2008). In this negligence litigation,
the plaintiff filed a motion to prevent the defendant from using the plaintiff’s work-product
correspondences to his expert. Previously, the plaintiff’s expert furnished a four-page letter and an
e-mail authored by the plaintiff’s counsel to the defendant in paper format. The defendant argued
that this voluntary disclosure waived work-product protection, and also argued that Fed.R.Civ.P.
26(b)(5)(B) applies only within the context of electronically stored documents. The court disagreed,
holding that Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(5)(B) applies to both paper and electronic documents. However,
the court held that Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(5)(B) merely provides a procedure for addressing the issue
of waiver and “the voluntary disclosure of a work product document into the hands of the adversary
results in a waiver of the privilege.”
� Coleman (Parent) Holdings, Inc. v. Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc., 2007 WL 4336316 (Fla. Dec.
12, 2007). In this underlying fraud case, a jury originally awarded the plaintiff $1.58 billion due to
the defendant’s willful destruction of e-mail and failure to comply with the court’s production order.
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