Japanese eDiscovery Services | FRCP Cases

FRCP (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) Cases

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) are the rules which govern procedures in civil suits. Over the past 5 years, issues of data retention and other "gray areas" regarding the role of technologically advancing medias have been addressed. Below are some of the ground-breaking cases in this area.

Juniper Networks v. Toshiba
Magana v. Hyundai
MOSAID v. Samsung
Adams v. Dell
Burkybile v. Mitsubishi
Toshiba v. Superior Court
Ukiah v. Mitsubishi
Canon v. S.A.M.

Juniper Networks, Inc. v. Toshiba America, Inc. (2007)

Juniper sued Toshiba for alleged infringement over BIOS source code for a memory controller. Toshiba initially claimed the code was “unavailable” and that a third party possessed the code. Toshiba later admitted it did have the code but had chosen not to produce it to the court because they did not believe it was relevant. The court ruled that Toshiba willfully and intentionally violated the discovery order, in fact committing discovery abuse and was sanctioned in the following manner:

Limit to Toshiba’s jury selection time to ½ that of Juniper’s.
Loss of two juror strikes, leaving Toshiba with a total of 2 strikes.
Limiting Toshiba’s opening statement time to ½ of Juniper’s.
Limiting Toshiba’s closing statement to a third of Juniper’s.
Disallowing Toshiba any expert testimony, except via cross examination of Juniper’s witness.
Informing and instructing the jury that Toshiba willfully withheld document in discovery and that they should consider this fact when determining witness credibility of Toshiba witnesses.
Toshiba was charged for the cost of Juniper attorney and other fees related to Toshiba’s discovery abuse.

Magana v. Hyundai Motors America (2009)

In 1997, Magana filed claim against Hyundai of design defect that caused his automobile accident. Hyundai refused to directly answer Magana’s number of requests and made no request to narrow the scope of discovery. When the trial moved to the Supreme Court, the Court noted that “a corporation must search all of its departments, not just its legal department, when a party requests information about other claims during discovery.” The Supreme Court also stated “Hyundai had the obligation not only to diligently and in good faith respond to discovery efforts, but to maintain a document retrieval system that would enable Hyundai to respond to plaintiff's requests. Hyundai is a sophisticated multinational corporation, experienced in litigation.” The court affirmed the trial court's order and the jury's award of $8,000,000 for "willfully and deliberately" failing to respond to the plaintiff's discovery requests.

MOSAID Tech., Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (2007)

MOSAID initiated ligation against Samsung for patent infringement in 2001.The court imposed several sanctions against Samsung related to Samsung’s failure to deliver certain documentation in the discovery phase of the case and for its destruction of email evidence relevant to the case. Samsung appealed the sanctions for failure to implement a litigation hold. Samsung had failed to intervene in its automatic policy allowing e-mails to be deleted. As a result, it “failed to produce a single technical e-mail in this highly technical patent litigation because none had been preserved.” The court found that Samsung “knew it had a duty to preserve potentially discoverable evidence and knew that emails were potentially relevant to this litigation.” The court upheld the monetary sanctions.

Phillip M. Adams & Associates, LLC v. Dell, Inc. et al (2009)

Adams sued Dell, ASUS, Fujitsu Limited, Sony Electronics and several others for patent infringement. The plaintiff alleged that "ASUS has destroyed the source code and documents relating to [two] test programs" created with "Adams' patented and proprietary technology . . . ." Adams also claimed ASUS destroyed documents that would have conclusively demonstrated ASUS' piracy. The crux of the case is ASUS’ questionable information management practices. “While an entity may design its information management practices to suit its business purposes, one of those business purposes must be accountability to third parties…It is clear that ASUS’ lack of a retention policy and irresponsible data retention practices are responsible for the loss of significant data.” The court concluded that “[a]n organization should have reasonable policies and procedures for managing its information and records.”

Burkybile v. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. (2006)

Plaintiff filed claim against Mitsubishi, alleging that a part on plaintiff's Mitsubishi car contributed to his auto accident. The court ordered Mitsubishi to produce "summaries, abstracts, or data compilations" regarding warranty claims. Mitsubishi responded that it was unable to locate information used to compile previously produced reports. The court stated that "[i]t may in fact be the database, like some sort of digital organism, changes over time. But it does not follow that the critical underlying information is no longer obtainable at all," and held that the "data compilation" to be produced at least included the database used. The court ordered further production by Mitsubishi but did not grant the default judgment sought by plaintiff.

Toshiba American Elec. Components, Inc. v. Superior Court (2004)

In the initial case, the plaintiff sued Toshiba for misappropriation of trade secrets and related torts and sought documents in 60 categories. Dispute arose over recovery of email documents. Toshiba had more than 800 backup tapes and they had hired an electronic discovery specialist to examine the tapes. This specialist determined that the tapes required certain processing. This process was estimated to cost between $1.5 and $1.9 million. Toshiba asked plaintiff to share some or all of the cost depending upon how many tapes plaintiff wanted processed. The plaintiff refused and filed a motion to compel. The court simply ordered Toshiba to produce all non-privileged emails from its backup tapes within 60 days. Toshiba petitioned for a writ of mandate and sought a stay of the trial court's order. Toshiba referenced Rule 2031(g)(1) and argued that an automatic cost-shifting provision should apply. The appellate court concurred with Toshiba but also pointed out that this ruling does not mean that the demanding party must always pay all the costs associated with retrieving usable data from backup tapes. "Section 2031(g)(1) is clear that the demanding party is expected to pay only its reasonable expense for a necessary translation. Reasonableness and necessity are purely factual issues (undoubtedly there are others), which, when disputed, are properly submitted to the discretion of the trial court.”

Ukiah Auto Invs. V. Mitsubishi Motors of N. Am., Inc. (2006)

Mitsubishi requested permission to inspect the computer used to record Ukiah's business transactions. Ukiah recounted that this request was unnecessary because it had produced all relevant documents from the computer in paper format. Mitsubishi stated that this was insufficient because many financial statements were missing. Ukiah later stated that the computer in question was no longer operational. Ukiah requested that any inspection be conducted by a neutral party at Mitsubishi's expense. The court decided that an inspection of the computer was appropriate. It ruled that, unless Ukiah was able to produce the relevant documents in electronic form on its own, Ukiah would be required to produce the computer to an agreed-upon neutral inspector within 30 days from the date of the order. The magistrate further ruled that any expenses would be paid by Ukiah.

Canon USA, Inc. v. S.A.M., Inc. (2008)

During initial discovery requests in July 2007, Canon requested documents and SAM indicated that many documents contained in his office building had been destroyed in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as a subsequent fire, but he would continue to search for said documents. Canon argued that SAM should be required to hire a forensic specialist to examine the computer and server in question. The court found SAM’s responses “unavailing,” citing Rule 37(a)(4) that an incomplete response is equivalent to a complete failure to respond. “If [producer] is physically or emotionally unable to search through the documents, then he must hire someone to perform the search on his behalf, as he has an obligation under the Rules to comply with discovery and provide responsive information.” Because the electronic information was located on a server, the court found the data to be accessible under Zubulake “because data stored on servers are typically machine-readable and in active format.” Thus, SAM must bear the costs of the specialist.