Evidence
June 18, 2013
By Doug Austin
Remember the adverse inference instructions in the Zubulake v. UBS Warburg and Apple v. Samsung cases? This case has characteristics of both of those. In Pillay v. Millard Refrigerated Servs., Inc., Illinois District Judge Joan H. Lefkow granted the plaintiff’s motion for an adverse inference jury instruction due to the defendant’s failure to stop automatic deletion of employee productivity tracking data used as a reason for terminating a disabled employee.
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June 17, 2013
By Doug Austin
Over the past few weeks, we have talked about the benefits and capabilities of Forensic Toolkit (FTK) Imager from AccessData (and obtaining your own free copy), how to create a disk image, how to add evidence items for the purpose of reviewing the contents of those evidence items (such as physical drives or images that you’ve created) and how to export files and create a custom content image of a targeted collection of files with FTK Imager. This week, let’s discuss how to Capture Memory and Obtain Protected Files to collect a user’s account information and possible passwords to other files.
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June 04, 2013
By Doug Austin
Over the past few weeks, we have talked about the benefits and capabilities of Forensic Toolkit (FTK) Imager from AccessData (and obtaining your own free copy), how to create a disk image and how to add evidence items with FTK Imager for the purpose of reviewing the contents of evidence items, such as physical drives or images that you’ve created. This week, let’s discuss how to export files and how to create a custom content image of a targeted collection of files.
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May 31, 2013
By Doug Austin
Sharon Nelson wrote a terrific post about the “controversy” regarding the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Enron Data Set in her Ride the Lightning blog (Is the Enron E-Mail Data Set Worth All the Mudslinging?). I wanted to repeat some of her key points here and offer some of my own perspective directly from sitting in on the Data Set team during the EDRM Annual Meeting earlier this month.
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May 30, 2013
By Doug Austin
If you think discovery violations by the other side can cause you problems, imagine being this guy. As reported by WRAL.com in Durham, North Carolina, the defense in State of North Carolina v. Raven S. Abaroa filed a Motion to Dismiss the Case for Discovery Violations after the state produced a forensic image of a hard drive (in the middle of trial) that had been locked away in the Durham Police Department for eight years.
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May 20, 2013
By Doug Austin
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the benefits and capabilities of Forensic Toolkit (FTK) Imager, which is a computer forensics software application provided by AccessData, as well as how to download your own free copy. Then, last week, we discussed how to create a disk image. This week, let’s discuss how to add evidence items with FTK Imager for the purpose of reviewing the contents of evidence items, such as physical drives or images that you’ve created.
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May 17, 2013
By Doug Austin
In AtHome Care, Inc. v. The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, Idaho District Judge B. Lynn Winmill granted the plaintiff’s motion to compel documents, ordering the defendant to identify and produce metadata for the documents in this case.
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May 16, 2013
By Doug Austin
Last week, we reported from the Annual Meeting for the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) group and discussed some significant efforts and accomplishments by each of the project teams within EDRM. That included an update from the EDRM Data Set project, where an effort was underway to identify and remove personally-identifiable information (“PII”) data from the EDRM Data Set. Now, version 1 of the Data Set is completed and available for download.
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May 14, 2013
By Doug Austin
In Advanced Tactical Ordnance Systems, LLC v. Real Action Paintball, Inc., Indiana Magistrate Judge Roger B. Cosbey took the unusual step of allowing the plaintiff direct access to a defendant company’s database under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34 because the plaintiff made a specific showing that the information in the database was highly relevant to the plaintiff’s claims, the benefit of producing it substantially outweighed the burden of producing it, and there was no prejudice to the defendant.
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May 13, 2013
By Doug Austin
A few days ago, we talked about the benefits and capabilities of Forensic Toolkit (FTK), which is a computer forensics software application provided by AccessData, as well as how to download your own free copy. Now, let’s discuss how to create a disk image.
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May 03, 2013
By Doug Austin
Let’s recap. So far, in our discussion of free utilities for collection of data for eDiscovery, we’ve discussed the pitfalls of using drag and drop, the benefits of Robocopy (illustrating with the same example copy) and the benefits (and pitfalls) of Richcopy for targeted collection. But, are there any free tools that will enable you to perform a bit-by-bit forensic image copy that includes deleted files and slack space data? Yes, there is.
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April 26, 2013
By Doug Austin
If you want to be able to perform a forensically sound targeted collection, but would prefer a GUI based tool for performing the copy (instead of a command-line tool like Robocopy), then perhaps you should consider Richcopy. RichCopy is a free computer utility program developed by Ken Tamaru of Microsoft to copy file directories. It has some advantages, but also some pitfalls, to consider as a targeted copy and collection tool.
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April 19, 2013
By Doug Austin
Yesterday, we discussed the benefits of Robocopy, how to access it via the command line prompt (if you have Windows Vista or later) and how to get it (if you don’t). Today, we’re going to perform an example copy and take a look at the results.
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April 18, 2013
By Doug Austin
Last week, we discussed the pitfalls of using drag and drop for collecting files for eDiscovery and illustrated an example using a blog post that I wrote about a month ago in a Word document for the post Five Common Myths About Predictive Coding. If you followed the steps along with one of your own files, you noticed that the resulting file appeared to have been modified before it was created, which reflects spoliation of the metadata during the copy process. I mentioned that there are better, more forensically sound, free methods for collecting data. One such method is Robocopy.
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April 12, 2013
By Doug Austin
Sounds like a trick question, doesn’t it? The answer is yes. And, collecting files in a forensically unsound manner can be a drag…and drop.
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February 12, 2013
By Doug Austin
In Optiver Australia Pty. Ltd. & Anor. v. Tibra Trading Pty. Ltd. & Ors., California Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal granted much of the defendant’s motion to quash subpoena of Google for electronic communications sent or received by certain Gmail accounts allegedly used by employees of the defendant because most of the request violated the terms of the Stored Communications Act.
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December 10, 2012
By Doug Austin
It isn’t every day that eDiscoveryDaily has reason to reference The Hollywood Reporter in a story about eDiscovery case law, but even celebrities have eDiscovery preservation obligations during litigation. In Augstein v. Leslie, New York District Judge Harold Baer imposed an adverse inference sanction against hip hop and R&B artist Ryan Leslie for “negligent destruction” of a hard drive returned to him by the plaintiff after a $1 million reward was offered via YouTube. On November 28, a jury ordered him to pay the $1 million reward to the plaintiff.
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November 21, 2012
By Doug Austin
In Freeman v. Dal-Tile Corp., a case alleging harassment and discrimination, among other claims, against her former employer Dal-Tile Corporation, the plaintiff brought a motion to compel, asserting that some of the defendant’s discovery responses related to its search for ESI were deficient.
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November 16, 2012
By Doug Austin
As reported on by Megan Garber of The Atlantic, email location data led FBI investigators to discover CIA director David Petraeus’ affair with Paula Broadwell that led to his resignation. The irony is that FBI investigators weren’t aware of, or looking for, information regarding the affair. Here’s what happened, according to the article.
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October 18, 2012
By Doug Austin
In Matter of Tilimbo, a court held it was permissible to order cloning of computer files where doing so did not place an unreasonable burden on a nonparty, appropriate steps were taken to protect any privileged information, and the nonparty had not previously produced the requested information in hard copy.
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September 20, 2012
By Doug Austin
It’s hard to believe that it has been two years ago today since we launched the eDiscoveryDaily blog. Now that we’ve hit the “terrible twos”, is the blog going to start going off on rants about various eDiscovery topics, like Will McAvoy in The Newsroom? Maybe. Or maybe not. Wouldn’t that be fun! Here are some highlights from the past six months.
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September 10, 2012
By Doug Austin
In Robinson v. Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc., Oregon Magistrate Judge Paul Papak found that social media is just another form of electronically stored information (ESI), stating “I see no principled reason to articulate different standards for the discoverability of communications through email, text message, or social media platforms. I therefore fashion a single order covering all these communications.”
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