Spoliation

You may have read my colleague Starling Underwood’s post on two recent Second Circuit decisions discussing sanctions for spoliation. If you have not, I encourage you to read it here.  In this post, and continuing our music-themed sanction discussions, I narrow the focus to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 37(e), which is used to determine whether and what sanctions are appropriate when ESI spoliation occurs. A recent decision from the Minnesota District Court involving the estate of the artist Prince Rodgers Nelson (“Prince”), Paisley Park Enterprises, Inc. v. Boxill, provides a detailed review of the sanctions analysis under Rule 37(e), while dealing with a category of very common ESI data often at issue in litigation today –  mobile phone text messages.

This is Part One of a continuing series on ESI basics. In this series, we will cover some of the terms used most often on the tech-side of e-discovery. Whether this is an introduction to you, or a refresher, and whether you are an attorney, member of an in-house team, or data analyst, we think this information may come in handy in your practice.

There was a time when the only data you needed to collect in response to a discovery request was corporate email. Fast forward to present day. Employees are conducting business with smartphones, via social media and with the assistance of wearable technology. As a result, responding to e-discovery requests has become increasingly challenging.