It is one of my favorite words – spoliation. It just slides right off of a litigator’s tongue. I have been litigating, either as direct claims over destruction of evidence or as an evidentiary inference, the concepts of spoliation for decades. If memory serves, the first time I handled it was defending a direct claim
I have written before, probably on more than one occasion, about the fundamental philosophical problem underlying electronic discovery, which is that lawyers and courts continue to view it through the traditional rubric of discovery, one formed in the world of paper documents, interrogatory answers, and deposition testimony. As I have discussed in the past, battles
Well, I think Roy Harmon and I (mostly Roy, actually) just previewed for you what this webinar plans to cover, the ethical and privilege traps involved in providing legal counsel to ERISA governed plans and their administrators. Still – luckily for people like me and Roy who blog on these subjects and for the presenters
Here is an excellent article on electronic discovery under the federal rules, and efforts to reduce the expense of this process by protecting against inadvertent waiver of privilege. As long time readers know, I have frequently criticized the structure and format of the federal rules, and their application by the courts, concerning electronic discovery, for
A couple of different things from my desk today that are worth passing on.
First, for those of you interested – as I am and have often discussed in these electronic pages – in the need to balance effective litigation tactics with the costs of litigation, particularly given discovery and e-discovery issues, I pass along this article
A. Broken;
B. Subject to abuse;
C. So expensive that it can force settlements even where the merits don’t warrant it;
D. An aspect of civil procedure that is still waiting for the courts to create a jurisprudence that will properly manage its potential costs and complexity;
E. Good only for vendors;
F. All of
I have written a lot on the blog about electronic discovery, most recently in this post, and much of it relates to the legal issues revolving around whether and when to allow such discovery. Before it vanishes off their website, I thought I would pass along this piece out of the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly
Here’s an interesting law review article, passed along in detail by the Workplace Prof, on problems, and potential solutions, in managing discovery. Discovery, to beat what must now be a dead horse, has become infinitely more complicated and expensive – with far more consequences for mistakes – in any type of complex litigation
Practicing lawyers like things that condense a lot of information accurately into relatively compact but still useful formats. I suspect – or at least hope – that is why many people read this blog, for instance. Along those lines, tucked in among the piles of junk email in my in box for mail order pharmacies
Michael Fox, who jots down his thoughts about employment law and other things over on his excellent blog, Jottings by an Employer’s Lawyer, raised an interesting point about electronic discovery in a post the other day when he was commenting on my recent discussion of whether electronic discovery threatens to render arbitration the better