Electronic Discovery and Evidence

NY Court Refuses to Relieve Burden of Law Firm to Delete Confidential Business Informtion

The Court affirmed the lower court's decision upholding a "confidentiality agreement" requiring a law firm to destroy all confidential business information provided to it after the case was concluded. After the case settled, the law firm which was provided the confidential information requested that the agreement not be enforced because of the cost of deleting the information since it had been backed up several times on the law firm computers.  Oxxford Info. Tech., Ltd. v Novantas LLC, 2010 NY Slip Op 8363, 2 (N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dep't Nov. 16, 2010).

Judge Facciola Denies Proportionality Request

In this condom monopoly inquiry, the defendant argued that the FTC's request was unduly burdensome. The Court rejected the burdensome/proportionality argument citing the failure of the defendant to present sufficient proof of the burdensome of the request and the high standard of proof required. The Court stated that compliance must threaten "to unduly disrupt or seriously hinder normal operations of a business." Id. There is no affidavit or other supporting proof that would permit that conclusion. . . . (citation omitted).   Moreover, as indicated by the parties' agreements concerning search terms for searching documents in the United States, there may be electronic means of searching the data that the parties can mutually agree upon to keep the burden to the minimum.  FTC v. Church & Dwight Co., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 115205, at *10-12 (D.D.C. Oct. 29, 2010)(Facciola, J.)

The Dangers of "BCC'ING" Your Client!

In a contractual dispute, defendant's counsel sent an e-mail to opposing counsel and blind copied (bcc) his client. His client than proceeded to respond to the e-mail and sent it using the "all reply" function which sent a copy of his privileged communication to opposing counsel. Defendant's counsel immediately sent a request to opposing counsel to delete the privileged e-mail, but counsel refused to do so. This was the second time this had happened. . . .  (Read more . . . )

Personal/Business Use or eDiscovery Source

"We’re obviously tech guys.  So, when something goes digital, we’re the first to check it out.  Everyone misses phone calls and, if you’re anything like us, the mere act of checking voicemails is mundane and time consuming.  Google Voice takes the phone experience to a new level.

There are a few different ways to sign up for Google Voice.  You can get a brand new phone number which allows you to take full advantage of their feature set.  The other option is to keep your existing phone number and utilize their great voicemail features.

The feature list is too long for the scope of this post, but the one phenomenal feature that I can’t get enough of is transcribed voicemails sent to my email inbox.  Any time I miss a phone call, Google Voice picks up the voicemail (which I can customize for specific people or groups) . . . " (read more).

Mainframes to Client/Server to Cloud Computing - "Federal government picks 11 cloud-computing vendors"

"The General Services Administration last week said it has approved 11 companies to sell the infrastructure for cloud -- or Internet-based -- computing to federal agencies. Government officials have stressed the benefits of cloud computing, which allows users to access a pool of Internet-based resources, such as networks, servers and applications, rather than invest in computing infrastructure. . . " (Read more).