Social Technology
May 24, 2013
By Doug Austin
With Anthony Weiner’s announcement that he is attempting a political comeback by running for mayor on New York City, it’s worth remembering the “Twittergate” story that ultimately cost his congressional seat in the first place – not to bash him, but to remind all of us how important it is to think before you hit send (even if he did start his campaign by using a picture of Pittsburgh's skyline instead of NYC's -- oops!). Here is another reminder of that fact.
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April 16, 2013
By Doug Austin
In Gatto v. United Air Lines, Inc., New Jersey Magistrate Judge Steven C. Mannion issued an adverse inference sanction against the plaintiff for failing to preserve data due to the fact that he either, deactivated his Facebook account and allowed the account to be automatically deleted after fourteen days, or that he deleted the account outright. Judge Mannion denied the defendant’s request for attorney’s fees and costs for “the time and effort it was forced to expend in an effort to obtain discovery”.
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April 11, 2013
By Doug Austin
In Potts v. Dollar Tree Stores, Inc., Tennessee District Judge William Haynes ruled that the defendant “lacks any evidentiary showing that Plaintiff's public Facebook profile contains information that will reasonably lead to the discovery of admissible evidence” and, therefore, denied the defendant’s motion to compel regarding same.
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April 02, 2013
By Doug Austin
In Christou v. Beatport, LLC, Colorado District Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled that the plaintiffs could introduce evidence at trial to show the defendants failure to preserve text messages after the key defendant’s iPhone was lost. However, the judge also ruled that the defendants could present “evidence in explanation…and argue that no adverse inference should be drawn”.
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January 25, 2013
By Doug Austin
As a graduate of Baylor University, I thought I would have found a way to work last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Baylor’s own Robert Griffin III, into a blog post before this year’s Heisman winner, but this story involving Johnny Manziel is too good to pass up as an example of how pervasive social media has become in our daily lives and how it can impact the legal process.
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January 22, 2013
By Doug Austin
In Keller v. National Farmers Union Property & Casualty Co., the defendants filed a motion to compel the plaintiff’s to respond to various discovery requests. While Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch granted their request to compel the plaintiffs to produce medical records, he denied the defendant’s request “to delve carte blanche into the nonpublic sections of Plaintiffs' social networking accounts”.
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January 17, 2013
By Doug Austin
As we noted the past two days, eDiscoveryDaily published 98 posts related to eDiscovery case decisions and activities over the past year, covering 62 unique cases! Yesterday, we looked back at cases related to social media and the first cases approving technology assisted review. Today, let’s take a look back at cases related to admissibility and the duty to preserve and produce electronically stored information (ESI).
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January 16, 2013
By Doug Austin
As we noted yesterday, eDiscoveryDaily published 98 posts related to eDiscovery case decisions and activities over the past year, covering 62 unique cases! Yesterday, we looked back at cases related to proportionality and cooperation, privilege and inadvertent disclosures, and eDiscovery cost reimbursement. Today, let’s take a look back at cases related to social media and, of course, technology assisted review(!).
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December 20, 2012
By Doug Austin
Considering proportionality and accessibility concerns in EEOC v. Original Honeybaked Ham Co. of Georgia, Colorado Magistrate Judge Michael Hegarty held that where a party had showed certain of its adversaries’ social media content and text messages were relevant, the adversaries must produce usernames and passwords for their social media accounts, usernames and passwords for e-mail accounts and blogs, and cell phones used to send or receive text messages to be examined by a forensic expert as a special master in camera.
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November 02, 2012
By Doug Austin
As was the case in Mailhoit v. Home Depot previously, Magistrate Judge Mark R. Abel ruled in Howell v. The Buckeye Ranch that the defendant’s request (to compel the plaintiff to provide her user names and passwords for each of the social media sites she uses) was overbroad.
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October 03, 2012
By Doug Austin
As reported by Reuters, Twitter has turned over Tweets and Twitter account user information for Malcolm Harris in People v. Harris, after their motion for a stay of enforcement was denied by the Appellate Division, First Department in New York and they faced a finding of contempt for not turning over the information. Twitter surrendered an “inch-high stack of paper inside a mailing envelope” to Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino, which will remain under seal while a request for a stay by Harris is heard in a higher court.
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October 01, 2012
By Doug Austin
In Mailhoit v. Home Depot, Magistrate Judge Suzanne Segal ruled that the three out of four of the defendant’s discovery requests failed Federal Rule 34(b)(1)(A)’s “reasonable particularity” requirement, were, therefore, not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence and were denied.
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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 19, 2012
By Doug Austin
As reported in the Gibbons E-Discovery Law Alert blog, Twitter filed an appeal of the trial court’s decision in People v. Harris with the Appellate Division, First Department in New York, arguing that Twitter users have the right to quash subpoenas pursuant to Twitter’s terms of service agreement as well as because defendants’ constitutional rights are implicated by a government-issued subpoena to a third party. Unfortunately for Twitter, it didn’t take long for the appellate court panel to rule, as they denied Twitter’s motion for a stay of enforcement of the Trial Court’s order to produce Malcolm Harris’s tweets last week.
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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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August 30, 2012
By Doug Austin
One thing about being a daily blog is that the posts accumulate more quickly. As a result, I’m happy to announce that today is our 500th post on eDiscoveryDaily! In less than two years of existence! So, what have we covered over the first 499 posts?
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July 27, 2012
By Doug Austin
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Twitter plans to appeal a court order requiring the company to produce messages posted by Malcolm Harris, an Occupy Wall Street activist facing criminal charges. He was one of more than 700 people arrested last October when demonstrators marched onto the Brooklyn Bridge roadway.
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July 23, 2012
By Doug Austin
I try to set aside some time over the weekend to catch up on my reading and keep abreast of developments in the industry and although that’s sometimes that’s easier said than done, I stumbled across an interesting compilation of legal technology information from my friend Christy Burke and her team at Burke & Company. On Friday, Burke & Company released The Legal Technology Observer (LTO) Time Capsule on Legal IT Professionals. LTO was a 6 week concentrated collection of essays, articles, surveys and blog posts providing expert practical knowledge about legal technology, eDiscovery, and social media for legal professionals.
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July 19, 2012
By Doug Austin
As illustrated in the example we posted Tuesday, Twitter continues to receive requests from government agencies for user information (often related to litigation). How many are they receiving? Now, you can find out, simply by clicking on their new Transparency Report page to see the number of requests they have received.
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July 17, 2012
By Doug Austin
First, Malcolm Harris tried to quash a subpoena seeking production of his Tweets and his Twitter account user information in his New York criminal case. That request was rejected, so Twitter then sought to quash the subpoena themselves, claiming that the order to produce the information imposed an “undue burden” on Twitter and even forced it to “violate federal law”. Now, the criminal court judge has ruled on Twitter’s motion.
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June 14, 2012
By Doug Austin
According to EDDUpdate.com, social media will be eclipsing email as the primary discovery resource within three years. As you can imagine, the sheer amount of content being generated is astounding. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo announced on June 6th that Twitter had broken the 400 million tweet-per-day barrier. With regard to ESI on social media networks, X1 Discovery features a solution called X1 Social Discovery, which is described as “the industry's first investigative solution specifically designed to enable eDiscovery and computer forensics professionals to effectively address social media content."
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May 22, 2012
By Doug Austin
Today is the start of LegalTech® West Coast 2012 (LTWC) and eDiscoveryDaily is here to report about the latest eDiscovery trends being discussed at the show. Over the next two days, we will provide a description each day of some of the sessions related to eDiscovery to give you a sense of the topics being covered. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, come check out the show – there are a number of sessions (both paid and free) available and 69 exhibitors providing information on their products and services, including (shameless plug warning!) my company, CloudNine Discovery, which just announced today release of Version 11 of our linear review application, OnDemand®, and will be exhibiting at booth #216 along with our partners, First Digital Solutions. Come by and say hi!
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