Legal Updates

E-Discovery Sanctions: 5 Practice Tips for Protecting Your Clients & Your Reputation

Katie King November 1st, 2018
Sanctions

 

For more information, please contact Katie King at kaking@kilpatricktownsend.com.  

Topics: E-Discovery E-Discovery Best Practices Discovery Sanctions Sanctions

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  • Spoiler Alert! Another Legal Update on Data Preservation and Spoliation Implications

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    Ignorance might be bliss, but it is not a defense. This is especially true as it relates to one’s duty to comply with a litigation hold. To avoid potential Rule 37(e) sanctions, attorneys must be familiar with the preservation steps needed for basic sources of ESI and take care to ensure that their clients understand the same.

  • Blurred Lines: Personal Devices, Proportionality, and Piercing the Work Product Privilege

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  • Spoiler Alert! Another Legal Update on Data Preservation and Spoliation Implications

    There appears to be a recent theme on this blog regarding data preservation and spoliation, and—not to spoil anyone’s appetite for this important topic—we are back with another one. And for good reason given the heightened risk of spoliation sanctions in today’s increasingly data-driven legal landscape. A recent order in Safelite Group, Inc. v. Lockridge is one of many that highlights the growing need to stay apprised of the various steps necessary to ensure compliance with essential data preservation requirements.

    Ignorance might be bliss, but it is not a defense. This is especially true as it relates to one’s duty to comply with a litigation hold. To avoid potential Rule 37(e) sanctions, attorneys must be familiar with the preservation steps needed for basic sources of ESI and take care to ensure that their clients understand the same.

  • Blurred Lines: Personal Devices, Proportionality, and Piercing the Work Product Privilege

    In a fairly short opinion and order, the district court in Weston v. DocuSign, Inc. analyzed whether the parties were entitled to the production of text messages from former employees’ personal devices and potential piercing of the attorney work product privilege. The issues in this opinion are not necessarily novel but illustrate significant concerns for litigants.

    In a world where the lines between our personal and private lives are increasingly blurry, the possibility of discovery on personal devices should come as a surprise to no one, and it is, of course, a litigation disaster to have the work product privilege protections pierced and to be ordered to turn over attorney notes, witness lists, and witness communications on the very subject of the litigation. So, what is the take-away for litigation counsel with respect to protecting the work product privilege?

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