From Practical e-Discovery: ”Lawson v. Sun Microsystems, Inc., 2010 WL 503054 (S.D. Ind. February 8, 2010) - Lawson is an ediscovery decision that has flown under the radar of most bloggers and legal commentators. It is a relatively short opinion, addressing whether sanctions should be imposed on the plaintiff and his former attorneys after the plaintiff unlocked certain password-protected documents produced by defendant in discovery that were privileged. The decision, however, implicates a number of ethical issues and the case could be used in teaching a course on ediscovery ethics. Because of the brevity of the district court’s opinion, many of the facts discussed below are taken from the Magistrate’s Report and Recommendation which can be read here.
The Magistrate, in addressing the defendant’s sanctions motion, described the issues presented by that motion as:
‘[T]he perfect storm of problems that can arise from voluminous electronic discovery in high stakes litigation. As with the storm of any magnitude – and this one might qualify as a Category 5 from the National Hurricane Center – the damage can be severe. Such is the case in the wake of this maelstrom.’
The defendant claimed in its motion for sanctions that the case was an ‘ediscovery version of Watergate,’ with the plaintiff acting as ‘the henchman who broke into the password-protected documents’ and his counsel engaging in the ‘cover-up.’ The district court, however, was not persuaded. While a relatively modest monetary sanction was imposed upon the plaintiff, the district court ultimately vacated the Magistrate’s recommended monetary sanction on plaintiff’s former counsel. Even when the defendant’s hyperbole is ignored, Lawson presents a number of knotty ethical issues that practitioners must be ready to recognize and properly address.”
