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.”

Practical e-Discovery – A Primer on e-Discovery ethics

”In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties.

This documentation is still in its early stages and work is ongoing. We are engaging directly with industry experts and interested customers to gather feedback on the quality of the technical documentation to ensure that it is clear and useful. When it is complete, it will be released under our Open Specification Promise, which will allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way.”

I think this is going to turn out to be big news for folks in both the IT and e-Discovery fields.

Interoperability @ Microsoft – Roadmap for Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) Documentation

”Many courts have imposed monetary sanctions against outside counsel of record for their negligence in working with their clients to preserve evidence. See eg., Green v. McClendon, 2009 WL 2496275 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 13, 2009) (discussed before in Mathematical Formula for Justice Proves the Importance of ESI in Civil Litigation). But this decision goes a step further and reaches behind the curtain to impose sanctions against in-house counsel. This was not your typical in-house counsel situation either. It was not a remote in-house attorney representing a large corporation. The attorney sanctioned was the general counsel for a local governmental entity, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Department.

This District Court opinion has not been published yet, but I expect it will be soon. It is, as far as I know, the first in the country to impose a monetary sanction against an in-house counsel who was not an attorney of record and was not a named party. The amount of the sanction has not yet been determined by the District Court judge who entered the order, but it will be substantial. The plaintiff incurred costs and attorney fees in excess of $300,000 to bring and prove the sanctions motion.”

Read more – e-Discovery Team: In-House Counsel Sanctioned for Defendant’s Failure to Preserve Evidence

”The Arizona state Supreme Court has ruled that the metadata attached to public records is itself public, and cannot be withheld in response to a public records request. Such a ruling on file metadata may not seem like a huge win for open government advocates, but it definitely is, given that metadata has unmasked more than one lobbyist’s effort to influence Congress.”

ARS Technica – Lobbyists beware: judge rules metadata is public record

In a case management hearing, the parties were directed to consider the following electronically stored information (ESI) issues at their Rule 26(f) conference for drafting their proposed Rule 16(b) order:

With regard to any discoverable electronically stored information (ESI) the parties may have, the Court further requests that the joint discovery plan also include any issues and concerns related to the following:

a. What ESI is available and where it resides;

b. Ease/difficulty and cost of producing information;

c. Schedule and format of production;

d. Preservation of information; and

e. Agreements about privilege or work-product protection.

Wallace v. Tindall, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 89669, *2-3 (W.D. Mo. Sept. 29, 2009).

Bow Tie Law’s Blog – Things to Think About for Your Rule 26(f) Meeting…