Litigation

Ninth Circuit Hands Google A Copyright Victory in Dispute Over Nude Pictures

One of the biggest stories in product liability in the past month has been the recall of tens of thousands of cans of food sold to consumers to feed to their companion animals. The news has attracted public attention because it is a tragedy of potentially epic proportion: Somewhere between 20 (according to the FDA) and 20,000-plus (by extrapolating statisticians) of the nation's nonhuman family members have developed serious illnesses and/or died from eating food containing something very toxic that has caused renal failure (still being debated). Furthermore, in the litigation arena, plaintiffs' attorneys ranging from sole practitioners to the large class action law firms most often in the headlines have all filed actions representing both individual clients and broad-ranging classes of thousands of individuals affected by the poisoned food. (At the time of this writing, more than 30 cases had supposedly been filed across the country.)

Recent rulings of interest to you and your practice.

Court Issues Spoliation Sanctions for 'Crashed' Hard Drive
Court Issues Adverse Jury Instruction Where Plaintiff Disposed of Evidence

Recent court rulings in e-discovery.

With a growing number of criminal cases depending on forensic searches of computers, the direction courts ultimately take is likely to affect a wide array of cases, ranging from hacking and piracy to murder investigations.

Keyword-based automated search tools are not necessarily accurate, especially when the search terms are brainstormed by counsel in a vacuum. And new-age concept-based tools, while often quite effective at targeting documents based on subject matter or concept, are technologically hard to explain and, as a result, hard to defend. Data analytics adds testing and analysis to keyword-based search, providing litigators with more accuracy and defensibility ' often at a much lower cost.

A new department centering on key cases.