Electronic Discovery – Page 2 – Attorney Evan Brown

November 15, 2012 Electronic Discovery, Privacy

Court orders in camera review of injured plaintiff’s Facebook content

Richards v. Hertz Corp., — N.Y.S.2d —, 2012 WL 5503841 (N.Y.A.D. 2 Dept. November 14, 2012)

Plaintiff sued defendant for personal injury. Defendant saw a photo plaintiff had publicly posted on Facebook of herself skiing. When defendant requested plaintiff to turn over the rest of her Facebook content (presumably to find other like-pictures which would undermine plaintiff’s case), plaintiff sought a protective order. The trial court granted the motion for protective order, but required plaintiff to turn over every photo she had posted to Facebook of herself engaged in a “sporting activity”.

Defendants appealed the entry of the protective order. On review, the appellate court reversed and remanded, finding that defendants had made a showing that at least some of the discovery sought would result in the disclosure of relevant or potentially relevant evidence.

But due to the “likely presence” of private and irrelevant information in plaintiff’s account, the court ordered the information be turned over to the judge for an in camera review prior to disclosure to defendants.

Whether the plaintiff effectively preserved her Facebook account information may be an issue here. The facts go back to 2009. One is left to wonder whether and to what extent plaintiff has not gone back and deleted information from her account which would bear on the nature and extent of her injuries. It goes to show that social media discovery disputes can take on a number of nuances.

Photo courtesy Flickr user decafinata under this Creative Commons license.

September 4, 2012 Electronic Discovery, Litigation, Privacy

Plaintiff has to turn over emotional social media content in employment lawsuit

Court holds that Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace postings relating to plaintiff’s emotional state must be produced in discovery.

Robinson v. Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc., 2012 WL 3763545 (D.Or. August 29, 2012)

Plaintiff sued her former employer for discrimination and emotional distress. In discovery, defendant employer sought from plaintiff all of her social media content that revealed her “emotion, feeling, or mental state,” or related to “events that could be reasonably expected to produce a significant emotion, feeling, or mental state.”

emotional on social media

When plaintiff did not turn over the requested content, defendant filed a motion to compel. The court granted the motion.

The court relied heavily on the case of E.E.O.C. v. Simply Storage Mgmt., LLC, 270 F.R.D. 430 (S.D.Ind. 2010) in ordering plaintiff to produce the requested social media content. The Simply Storage court found that:

It is reasonable to expect severe emotional or mental injury to manifest itself in some [social media] content, and an examination of that content might reveal whether onset occurred, when, and the degree of distress. Further, information that evidences other stressors that could have produced the alleged emotional distress is also relevant.

Consistent with the principles of Simply Storage the court in this case ordered production from plaintiff all social media communications:

that reveal, refer, or relate to any significant emotion, feeling, or mental state allegedly caused by defendant’s conduct;

The production of this category of communications was meant to elicit information establishing the onset, intensity, and cause of emotional distress allegedly suffered by plaintiff because of defendant during the relevant time period.

The court also ordered plaintif to produce all social media materials concerning:

events or communications that could reasonably be expected to produce a significant emotion, feeling, or mental state allegedly caused by defendant’s conduct.

This second category was meant to elicit information establishing the absence of plaintiff’s alleged emotional distress where it reasonably should have been evident (i.e., under the rubric of Simply Storage, on her social media accounts).

The court observed how counsel for the parties plays an important role in the discovery of social media. As the court in Simply Storage recognized, it is an “impossible” job for the court to define the limits of social media discovery with enough precision to satisfy the producing party. To address this impossible situation, it falls to the lawyers to act in good faith to produce required materials, inquire about what has and has not been produced, make the appropriate challenges, and seek revision of the discovery order as appropriate.

Photo courtesy Flickr user xdxd_vs_xdxd under this Creative Commons license.

April 11, 2012 Electronic Discovery, Employment, Evidence, Privacy

Employer not allowed to search for porn on employee’s home computer

Former employee sued her old company for subjecting her to a sexually hostile workplace and for firing her after she reported it. She claimed that she had never looked at pornography before she saw some on the computers at work. During discovery in the lawsuit, the company requested that employee turn over her home computer so that the company’s “forensic computer examiner” could inspect them.

The trial court compelled employee to produce her computer so that the forensic examiner could look for pornography in her web browsing history and email attachments. The employee sought mandamus review with the court of appeals (i.e., she asked the appellate court to order the lower court not to require the production of the hardware). The appellate held that she was entitled to relief, and that she did not have to hand over her computer.

The appellate court found that the lower court failed to consider an appropriate protective order that would limit inspection to uncover specifically-sought information in a particular form of production. In this case, the company had merely asked for the hardware without informing employee of the exact nature of the information sought. And the company provided no information about the qualifications of its forensic examiner. Though the trial court tried to limit the scope of the inspection with carefully chosen wording, the appellate court found that was not sufficient to protect the employee from the risks associated with a highly intrusive search.

In re Jordan, — S.W.3d —, 2012 WL 1098275 (Texas App., April 3, 2012)

January 27, 2012 Electronic Discovery, Litigation, Privacy

There is no “generalized right to rummage” through an adversary’s Facebook account

Tompkins v. Detroit Metro. Airport, 2012 WL 179320 (E.D. Mich. January 18, 2012)

Plaintiff filed a personal injury lawsuit against defendants claiming she was impaired in her ability to work and enjoy life. One of the defendants filed a motion with the court asking it to order plaintiff to authorize access to her entire Facebook account. The court denied the motion. Finding that defendant had not made a “sufficient predicate” showing that the sought-after information was relevant, and that the request was overly broad, the court held that defendant “[did] not have a generalized right to rummage at will through information that [plaintiff had] limited from public view.”

The court distinguished two other well-known social media discovery cases, Romano v. Steelcase and McMillen v. Hummingbird Speedway. In those cases, the Facebook users had posted photos of themselves engaged in activities that were inconsistent with their claimed injuries (e.g., going fishing and traveling to Florida). The publicly-visible photos that plaintiff in this case posted, which defendant argued made the rest of her account relevant, were of her holding a 2-pound dog, and standing with friends at a birthday party. “If [her] public Facebook page contained pictures of her playing golf or riding horseback,” the court noted, “[defendant] might have a stronger argument for delving into the nonpublic section of her account.”

The court made clear that its decision did not address the question of whether a Facebook user has a reasonable expectation of privacy in so-called private pages. (And there’s nothing in the decision to suggest that inquiry should be answered in the affirmative.) The court also noted that it was not answering the question of whether one could challenge a subpoena to Facebook under the Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. 2701 et seq.) as contemplated by Crispin v. Christian Audigier, 717 F.Supp.2d 965 (S.D. Cal. 2010).

Other coverage from Eric B. Meyer.

January 17, 2012 Anonymity, Copyright, Electronic Discovery, Evidence

No deposition of account holder allowed until he is named as defendant in BitTorrent copyright case

Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Doe, 2012 WL 90412 (E.D. Cal. July 11, 2012)

In a mass copyright infringement suit, plaintiff served a subpoena on an internet service provider and got the identifying information for the account holder suspected of trading a copy of a movie via BitTorrent. The account holder was uncooperative with plaintiff’s offers to settle, and denied downloading the file.

Instead of simply naming the identified account holder as a defendant in the case and proceeding with ordinary discovery, plaintiff asked the court for leave to take “expedited discovery,” namely, to depose the account holder to learn about:

the account holder’s involvement with the alleged distribution
his computers and network setup
his technical savvy
other users who may have had access to the computers or network

The court denied plaintiff’s request for leave to engage in the expedited discovery. It found that unlike other copyright cases in which anonymous infringers were identified, the efforts in this case “went far beyond seeking to identify a Doe defendant.” Instead, the court observed, it would be “a full-on deposition during which [the account holder] who plaintiff admits is likely not represented by counsel, may unwarily incriminate himself on the record before he has even been named as a defendant and served with process.”

June 14, 2011 Copyright, Electronic Discovery, Privacy

Court deals blow to anonymous Bittorrent defendants’ efforts to challenge subpoenas

West Coast Productions v. Does 1 – 5,829, — F.Supp.2d —, 2011 WL 2292239 (D.D.C. June 10, 2011)

The judge in one of the well-known mass copyright cases filed by Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver a/k/a U.S. Copyright Group (West Coast Productions v. Does 1 – 5,829) has issued an order denying motions to quash filed by several of the unnamed defendants. Plaintiff had served subpoenas on the ISPs associated with the IP addresses allegedly involved in Bittorrent activity, seeking to learn the identity of those account holders.

The ruling is potentially troubling because the court refused to even consider the arguments presented by those anonymous parties who did not reveal their identity in connection with the motion to quash. Such an approach undermines, and indeed comes close to refusing altogether to recognize any privacy interest that a person may have concerning his or her ISP account information.

The court observed that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require that a party must identify himself or herself in the papers filed with the court. In some situations, however, a court may grant a “rare dispensation” of anonymity after taking into account the risk of unfairness to the party seeking anonymity as well as the general presumption of openness in judicial proceedings.

In this case, the court noted that other courts had “uniformly held that the privacy interest in [ISP account] information is minimal and not significant enough to warrant the special dispensation of anonymous filing.”

Absent from the court’s analysis was the potential for harm to defendants who were the subject of these subpoenas but might have the ability to demonstrate (anonymously) that they were not involved. In cases involving adult content, in particular, the harm of being publicly associated with that content — even if the association turns out to be in error — is one that should not be disregarded in this way. Moreover, taking away the ability of an anonymous defendant to challenge his unmasking will encourage extortionate-like behavior on the part of copyright plaintiffs hoping to extract a settlement early in the case. If writing a check is the only way to keep from having to turn one’s name over (and this case pretty much establishes that rule), then more settlements should be expected.

The court went on to reject the arguments in favor of motions to quash filed by John Does who had provided their contact information to the court. The court found that it was premature to rule on any objections based on a lack of personal jurisdiction because the defendants filing the motions had not actually been named as a party. And the court rejected the arguments that the defendants were improperly joined into the action, noting the allegations in the complaint that the IP addresses were involved in a single Bittorrent swarm.

Evan Brown is a Chicago-based attorney practicing technology and intellectual property law. Send email to ebrown@internetcases.com, call (630) 362-7237, follow on Twitter at @internetcases, and be sure to like Internet Cases on Facebook.

June 11, 2011 Electronic Discovery, Trademarks, Unfair Competition

Court allows discovery of competitor’s keyword purchases

Scooter Store, Inc. v. Spinlife.com, LLC, 2011 WL 2160462 (S.D. Ohio June 1, 2011)

The Scooter Store and a related company sued a competitor for trademark infringement and other causes of action for unfair competition based in part on the competitor’s purchase of keywords such as “scooter store” and “your scooter store” to trigger sponsored advertisements on the web. Defendant moved for summary judgment and also moved for a protective order that would prevent it from having to turn over information to plaintiffs concerning defendant’s purchase of the keywords. The court denied the motion for protective order.

Defendant argued that it should not have to turn over the information because plaintiffs’ trademark claims based on those keywords were without merit, as the words are generic terms for the goods and services plaintiffs provide. Defendant also asserted a need to protect the commercially sensitive nature of information about its keyword purchases.

The court rejected defendant’s arguments, ordering that the discovery be allowed. It held that “whether or not [p]laintiffs’ claims involving these terms survive summary judgment [] has no bearing on whether the discovery [p]laintiffs seek is relevant, particularly viewed in light of a party’s broad rights to discovery under Rule 26.” As for protecting the sensitivity of the information, the court found that such interests could be protected through the process of designating the information confidential, and handled accordingly by the receiving party.

June 6, 2011 Electronic Discovery

Court shifts half of cost of forensic search to producing party in ediscovery case

[This is a post by Jonathan Rogers. Jon is a licensed attorney in California, with a focus on technology and entertainment law. You can reach him by email at jon@jonarogers.com or follow him on Twitter at @jonarogers.]

IWOI, LLC v. Monaco Coach Corporation, N.D. Ill. May 24, 2011

Plaintiff sued claiming breach of warranty and violations of certain state laws against consumer fraud stemming the sale of a motor coach. Plaintiff sought permission to search defendants’ hard drives to locate critical email which appeared to be missing from the original discovery production. Defendants contended that the email was not “reasonably accessible” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(2)(B) and, therefore, they were under no obligation to produce it.

The court specified that the burden was on the party responding to discovery to identify whether there may be materials responsive to discovery requests that are stored on its system, but because of burden or cost are not reasonably accessible. However, that party cannot simply provide documents which are easily obtained and then assert that they have produced everything that is responsive to the request. If other relevant and responsive documents exist (or may exist), the party must say so and then say why those documents cannot or should not be produced.

Here, the defendants submitted only materials that were quickly accessible on employees’ desktops and made no effort to look further, even when they became aware that there was a possibility that there may be missing documents. A forensic expert asserted that he found the critical email in two separate locations on the computer network: on a local hard drive in an orphaned, but not deleted, storage file and also on a network hard drive that had been manually backed up. The expert concluded that a native Microsoft windows search of defendants’ computers would have uncovered the email and could be undertaken by an individual with no advanced computer knowledge.

The Court did not find the failure to produce the document to be a deliberate act by defendants, but that the document could have been found with minimal effort. It recognized that plaintiff (and the court) expended additional time and effort and incurred significant additional expenses searching for this document. Therefore, the court shifted half of the cost of the electronic discovery search to defendants.

February 8, 2011 Electronic Discovery, Privacy, Uncategorized

Facebook user had standing to challenge subpoena seeking his profile information

Mancuso v. Florida Metropolitan University, Inc., 2011 WL 310726 (S.D. Fla. January 28, 2011 )

Plaintiff sued his former employer seeking back overtime wages. In preparing its defense of the case, the employer sent supboenas to Facebook and Myspace seeking information about plaintiff’s use of those platforms. (The employer probably wanted to subtract the amount of time plaintiff spent messing around online from his claim of back pay.) Plaintiff moved to quash the subpoenas, claiming that his accounts contained confidential and privileged information. The court denied the motion as to these social networking accounts, but did so kind of on a technicality. The subpoenas were issued out of federal district courts in California, and since this court (in Florida) did not have jurisdiction over the issuance of those subpoenas, it had to deny the motion to quash.

But there was some interesting discussion that took place in getting to this analysis that is worth noting. Generally, a party does not have standing to challenge a subpoena served on a non-party, unless that party has a personal right or privilege with respect to the subject matter of the materials subpoenaed. The employer argued that plaintiff did not have standing to challenge the subpoenas in the first place.

The court disagreed, looking to the case of Crispin v. Christian Audiger, Inc. 717 F.Supp.2d 965 (C.D. Cal. 2010), in which that court explained:

[A]n individual has a personal right in information in his or her profile and inbox on a social networking site and his or her webmail inbox in the same way that an individual has a personal right in employment and banking records. As with bank and employment records, this personal right is sufficient to confer standing to move to quash a subpoena seeking such information.

This almost sounds like an individual has a privacy right in his or her social media information. But the p-word is absent from this analysis. So from this case we know there is a right to challenge subpoenas directed at intermediaries with information. We’re just not given much to go on as to why such a subpoena should be quashed.

November 13, 2010 Electronic Discovery, Litigation, Privacy

Facebook account protected from disclosure in discovery, for now

McCann v. Harleysville Insurance, — N.Y.S.2d —, 2010 WL 4540599 (November 12, 2010)

Unlike some recent cases such as Romano v. Steelcase, which seem to give the impression that the information in a person’s social networking account is always fair game for discovery in litigation, one New York court has come down on the side of protecting the privacy of a Facebook user’s content.

Plaintiff was injured in an automobile accident and filed a lawsuit over her injuries. In the course of discovery, defendant sought photographs from plaintiff’s Facebook account and “an authorization” to access the account. Defendant claimed the sought-after discovery related to whether plaintiff sustained a serious injury.

After plaintiff did not respond to the discovery requests, defendant moved to compel. The trial court denied the motion, finding the discovery to be overly broad, and finding that defendant had failed to show the relevancy of the information to be discovered. Defendant sought review with the appellate court. On appeal, the court affirmed.

The court held that the discovery sought was too broad and that defendant had failed to show the relevancy of the information. It affirmed the denial of the motion as to avoid a “fishing expedition.”

But the holding is anything but reassuring from the plaintiff’s perspective. It affirmed the denial without prejudice to serving additional discovery requests. So it sounds as if defendant tailors its discovery a bit more closely, and shows how accessing plaintiff’s Facebook account will provide relevant evidence, it may see some success.