Maybe. Plaintiffs’ counsel in Thompson v Jiffy Lube Int’l, Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13078 (D. Kan. Feb. 22, 2007), was unable to comply with court-ordered discovery because, in counsel’s words, ‛in December 2005, my hard drive crashed and I lost a lot of data that had not been backed up and [the data at issue] were there.“ The defendants contended the ...

The Supreme Court held today that a district court has discretion to respond at once to a defendant's forum non conveniens plea, and need not take up first any other threshold objection. In particular, a court need not resolve whether it has authority to adjudicate the cause (subject-matter jurisdiction) or personal jurisdiction over the defendant if it determines t ...

Can an expert offer opinion testimony if he or she is relying on Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia that describes itself as ‛the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit“ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) and ‛an encyclopedia collaboratively written by many of its readers“ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction)? One might have though ...

The plaintiff and its counsel in In re Cardizem CD Antitrust Litig., 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS (6th Cir. Feb. 22, 2007), had filed an unsuccessful objection to a class action settlement, and resolution of that objection caused expense as well as delay. After the objection was overruled by the Sixth Circuit (in a prior decision), the District Court ordered plaintiffs� ...

Judge Denny Chin's judgment of acquittal in United States v. Finnerty is now reported at 2007 U.S. Dist. Lexis 11806 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 21, 2007). ...

1. Written directions to custodians and IT personnel. 2. Protocol for retrieving and preserving electronically-stored information. V 3. Monitoring procedures to ensure that custodians and IT personnel are following the directions and implementing the protocol. ...

1. Who are the key players? 2. Where is the electronically-stored information (ESI) that they generate? 3. Where else is relevant ESI stored? 4. How is it organized? 5. How difficult is it to retrieve? 6. How costly is it to retrieve? 7. Who has custody of it? < ...

Courts are divided as to whether a dispute over a third party subpoena that has been served outside the district in which the case is being litigated must be resolved in the district where the discovery is to be taken (i.e., where the subpoena is served) or whether it may be transferred to the district possessing the underlying action. Cases going both ways are cit ...

The Fourth Circuit’s 2-1 decision last week affirming dismissal of a securities fraud class action, Teachers' Retirement Sys. of Louisiana v. Hunter, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 3698 (4th Cir. Feb. 20, 2007), is notable in three respects: (1) its discussion of the ‛all facts“ requirement of the PSLRA, (2) the percentages of stock sold by the individual defendants ...

The automatic discovery stay of the PSLRA was partially lifted by Judge Gerald Rosen on February 15th in the Delphi securities class action (In re Delphi Corp. Secs. Litig., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10408 (E.D. Mich. Feb. 15, 2007)). The Court granted the securities plaintiffs access to the materials produced by Delphi, other defendants and third parties to federal au ...