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Selected court decisions concerning electronic discovery and automated litigation support:

::	OpenTV v. Liberate Technologies, N.D. Cal. No. C 02-0655 (Order Re Discovery dated November 18, 2003)
	cost allocation
	In an intellectual property infringement suit, the magistrate judge ruled that a portion of the costs of producing relevant computer source code should be shifted from the responding party to the requesting party. The plaintiff had requested production of some 100 additional versions of source code for software products being developed by the defendant. The defendant objected, stating that locating and duplicating the requested source code would be unduly burdensome and would yield only marginally relevant results. Instead, the defendant offered to make its complete source code database available at its facilities, along with a complete index to the database and a software engineer to provide technical assistance. The plaintiff rejected the offer, arguing that it essentially shifted production costs to plaintiff, the requesting party. Because extracting the source code would take the defendant between 125 and 150 hours of work, the court found that the requested electronic data was inaccessible for purposes of discovery and that cost-shifting would be appropriate. Applying the Zubulake factors, the court determined that the costs for extraction should be split evenly and the cost of duplication should be borne by the defendant.

::	Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, et al. (Oct. 22, 2003, S.D.N.Y.) (Zubulake IV)
	duty to preserve, spoliation

::	Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, et al. (July 24, 2003, S.D.N.Y.) (Zubulake III)
	cost allocation

::	Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, et al. (May 13, 2003, S.D.N.Y.) (Zubulake I)
	cost allocation

::	Residential Funding Corporation v. DeGeorge Financial Corp., et al. (Sept. 26, 2002, 2nd Cir.)
	spoliation

::	Danis v. USN Communications, 53 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 828 (N.D. Ill. 2000)
	duty to preserve

::	Mathias v. Jacobs, 197 F.R.D. 29 (S.D. N.Y. 2000)
	spoliation

::	Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Local 2000, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, AFL-CIO, et al., Civil No. 00-08 (DWF/AJB) (Feb. 2, 2000, D. Minn.)
	inspections

::	Linnen v. A.H. Robbins Co., Inc., No. 97-2307 (June 16, 1999, Mass. Supp. Ct.)
	spoliation

::	Lexis-Nexis v. Beer, 41 F. Supp. 2d 950 (D. Minn. 1999)
	spoliation

::	Gates Rubber Co. v. Bando Chemical Industries, et al., 167 F.R.D. 90 (D. Colo. 1996)
	expert witnesses, spoliation

::	In Re Brand Name Prescription Drugs Litigation, Nos. 94 C 897, MDL 997 (N.D. Ill 1995)
	cost allocation

Got a decision for me to post? Please let me know at george@sochaconsulting.com.