In Rodriguez Torres, et. al. v. Government Development Bank of Puerto Rico, et. al., 2010 WL 174156 (D. Puerto Rico Jan. 20, 2010), Senior District Judge Jaime Pieras, Jr. denied plaintiffs' motion to compel and motion for sanctions holding the requested emails were not reasonably accessible because of undue cost and burden of retrieval in relation to their potential relevance.

On January 15, 2010, Judge Shira Scheindlin issued an amended opinion in The Pension Committee of the University of Montreal Pension Plan, et. al. v. Banc of America Securities, et. al., 05 Civ. 9016 (S.D.N.Y. January 15, 2010). For a copy of the most recent opinion, click here.

In Pension Comm. Of the University of Montreal Pension Plan, et. al. v. Banc of America Securities, LLC, et. al., 05 Civ. 9016 (S.D.N.Y. January 11, 2010),  Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, in an 85-page opinion, granted defendants' motion for sanctions holding plaintiffs' failure to issue a timely litigation hold amounted to gross negligence and warranted an adverse inference instruction.

In Cherrington Asia Ltd, et. al. v. A&L Underground, Inc., et. al., 2010 U.S. Dist. Lexis 1546 (D. Kan. Jan 8, 2010), Magistrate Judge Donald W. Bostwick denied as untimely plaintiffs' motion for sanctions for defendant A&L's deliberate "document dump" of electronic information.

In Silverstein v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2009 WL 4949959 (D. Colo. Dec. 14, 2009), Magistrate Judge Kathleen Tafoya granted plaintiff's motion to compel deposition testimony regarding a privileged document holding defendants waited too long to object and seek the return of the document.

In David, et. al. v. Signal Int'l, LLC, et. al.., 2009 WL 5215326 (E.D.La. Dec. 28, 2009), Magistrate Judge Daniel E. Knowles III, granted plaintiffs' motion to compel production of e-mails and deposition testimony ruling that under Federal Rule of Evidence 502 and  case law, pro se defendant Kurella Rao waived the attorney-client privilege by failing to seek return of privileged information.

In United States v. Kimoto, 588 F.3d 464 (7^th Cir. Dec. 4, 2009), the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the defendant's conviction and sentence, while remanding the case to the district court for further proceedings.  The appellate court specifically rejected defendant's arguments that the government destroyed emails and failed to timely provide forensically sound electronically stored information.

In Kam Hing Enterprises, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., et. al., 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 184 (2nd Cir. Jan. 6, 2010), the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a partial summary judgment ruling related to plaintiff's copyright claim from the Southern District of New York (District Court Judge Miriam G. Cedarbaum).  The court also questioned defendants' decision to produce spreadsheets without also producing, either in paper form or electronically, the underlying information upon which the spreadsheets were based.

In Vagenos v. LDG Financial Services, LLC, 2009 U.S. Dist. Lexis 121490 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 31, 2009), District Court Judge Brian M. Cogan denied defendant's in limine motion to preclude plaintiff from offering at trial an alleged duplicate recording of an electronically-stored telephone message, but ordered an adverse inference instruction for plaintiff and his counsel's failure to preserve the message.

In Cornwell v. Northern Ohio Surgical Center, ltd., et al., 2009 Ohio 6975 (Ohio App. Dec. 31, 2009), the Ohio Appellate Court affirmed the trial court's ruling permitting plaintiff's experts to make forensic copies of defendants' hard drives.