November 17, 2014

Defendants Must Produce Archived Emails Even Though Plaintiff Cannot Do The Same

by Alan Brooks

Plaintiff Finjan in the Northern District of California patent litigation case Finjan v. Blue Coat Systems, Case No. 5:13-cv-03999-BLF(2014 WL 5321095 (N.D.Cal.) recently won a contentious motion to compel regarding Defendant Blue Coat Systems’s refusal to produce emails from its archived database.

Before the dispute arose, the parties had agreed to produce documents from a select number of custodians using agreed upon search terms.  Several of the custodians Defendant agreed to produce documents from were Defendant’s former employees whose emails were housed in archived databases.  When Defendant later learned that Plaintiff, on the other hand, was unable to produce any archived emails from its former employees, Defendant changed its tune and refused to produce the archived emails, claiming that it should not have to produce them if Plaintiff could not do the same.  Plaintiff eventually had to take the dispute to the court.

The court concluded that Defendant’s argument was “less than fair,” stating that “[o]ne party’s discovery shortcomings are rarely enough to justify another’s.”  Finding Plaintiff’s request reasonable, the court ordered Defendant to produce the archived emails pursuant to Plaintiff’s request.

ILS – Plaintiff Electronic Discovery Experts