This week’s case is a lengthy and well worth the read decision from District Court Judge Iain Johnston of the Northern District of Illinois. In a decision granting a motion for sanctions, but stopping short of issuing terminating sanctions, Judge Johnston articulates—with wonderful precision and a tongue in cheek approach—what lawyers obligations are in dealing with ESI and electronic discovery and how a failure to live up to those obligations in a very long running case has left the court to shoulder a tremendous burden to sort through what the judge refers to as “fundamental. Alone, each failure was problematic. Collectively, they were cataclysmic.”
Our video discussion of this week’s case, featuring guest Briordy Meyers, Director and Senior Counsel, eDiscovery for Boeringher Ingelhiem, ran so long that a transcription would be too long for one blog post. Instead, please click on the video above to hear Part 1 of DR Distributors v. 21 Century Smoking and the decision on the motion for sanctions dated January 19, 2021. Part 1 covers the facts of the case in detail and a discussion of the failings of counsel that led to the loss of evidence and imposition of sanctions, as well as steps on how to prevent such issues in the future.
On Tuesday, February 16, 2021, Kelly Twigger will be joined on ACEDS‘ #CaseoftheWeek by Doug Austin of eDiscovery Today for Part 2 of DR Distributors v. 21 Century Smoking. Kelly and Doug will analyze the basis for imposing sanctions under FRCP 26 and 37.
Watch Next Episode Live
#CaseoftheWeek streams live on the ACEDS YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn company pages. Subscribe to the ACEDS social channels to be notified when we go live.
Catch the Replay
You’ll be able to read episode summaries and watch the recorded show right here on the eDiscovery Assistant blog or access the recorded versions from the ACEDS social media channels.
