The Top Ediscovery Cases of 2014

In 2014, the world watched a Malaysian Airlines flight disappear, the Ebola pandemic multiply and the Winter Games take place in Sochi. At the same time, many people sought entertainment by singing along to the Frozen soundtrack, eagerly anticipating the next Hunger Games movie and waiting for new Netflix programs.

While all this (and more) was going on, the world of ediscovery saw its own major trends and headlines, especially when it came to important case law opinions.  In the last 12 months, judges addressed predictive coding protocols, stopped kidding when it came to sanctions and demanded social media data was preserved.

These major decisions spanned federal district courts, state courts, the tax court and even reached one of the federal appellate circuits. Prominent ediscovery topics in 2014 included:

• Procedural issues surrounding the use of predictive coding in litigation. In general, court began to accept predictive coding as an acceptable discovery technique;
• The duty to preserve with regards to text messages and social media. Courts used a case-by-case approach to see if the preservation of personal data was necessary for litigation;
• Production issues ranging from the etiquette of meet-and-confer conferences to the proportionality required in production as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are about change;
• The use of sanctions when lawyers take a “hands-off” approach to ediscovery; and
•  A multitude of ediscovery costs issues that were raised during the Apple v. Samsung dispute.