Smith v. Slifer Smith & Frampton/Vail Assocs. Real Estate, LLC, 2009 WL 482603 (D. Colo. Feb. 25, 2009) Plaintiffs, as representatives of an estate, retained defendants, including broker Peter Seibert, to assist in selling a piece of the estate’s property.  The property eventually sol...

Kvitka v. Puffin Co., LLC, 2009 WL 385582 (M.D. Pa. Feb. 13, 2009) Finding plaintiff intentionally discarded her laptop despite a duty to preserve it, the court ordered dismissal of her claims and an adverse inference instruction as to defendants’ cross-claims. After years of advertising in de...

SEC v. Badian, 2009 WL 222783 (S.D.N.Y Jan. 26, 2009) In this case, Rhino Investors, Inc. (“Rhino”), a non-party, sought to claw back approximately 260 documents that it claimed were inadvertently produced in 2003 in the midst of an SEC investigation.  The court, applying the four f...

Arista Records, LLC v. Usenet.com Inc., 2009 WL 185992 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 26, 2009) Upon finding that defendants acted in bad faith to deliberately destroy relevant evidence despite a duty to preserve, the court imposed severe sanctions. Defendant Usenet.com, operated by defendant Gerald Reynolds, is a ...

Lake v. City of Phoenix, 2009 WL 73256 (Ariz. Ct. App. Jan. 13, 2009) In this case, the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld a superior court ruling denying plaintiff’s motion to compel production of metadata associated with documents previously produced pursuant to Arizona’s Public Records L...

Covad Comm. Co. v. Revonet, Inc., 2008 WL 5377698 (D.D.C. Dec. 24, 2008) In this case arising from claims of misappropriation and conversion of trade secret information, plaintiff filed a motion to compel following a disagreement regarding the proper format of production of electronically stored inf...

Appellate procedure - recall of remittiturIn re Grunau (6th Dist., 12/3/08, H015871) 08 C.D.O.S. 15661    Defendant entitled to recall of remittitur because 1997 dismissal of appeal resulted from neglect and misconduct of appellate attorney (one Dan J. Foley) and relief not sought ...

Laethem Equip. Co. v. Deere & Co., 2008 WL 4997932 (E.D. Mich. Nov. 21, 2008) In this case involving breach of contract and other claims, the court ordered the defendant to return inadvertently produced, privileged, electronically stored information (“ESI”) to the plaintiffs, and ord...

Rhoads Indus., Inc. v. Bldg. Materials Corp. of Am., 2008 WL 4916026 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 14, 2008) In this breach of contract case, plaintiff Rhoads Industries, inadvertently produced over eight hundred privileged, electronic documents.  Defendants filed a motion to deem the claim of privilege waive...

Barnett v. Simmons, 2008 WL 4853360 (Okla. Nov. 14, 2008) In this case, plaintiff Barnett sued defendant Rock Oil Company seeking unpaid oil royalties allegedly owed to him.  Discovery in the case established that plaintiff maintained files on his computer related to his claims against Rock Oil...