Life Sciences Legal Update : Life Sciences Lawyers & Attorneys : Reed Smith Law Firm : Healthcare, Food and Drug Law, Biotechnology, Privacy, Product Liability

This post was written by Meghan Landrum and Renee Feldman.

California's tireless Civil Justice Association of California sponsored an electronic discovery bill that was signed into law on June 29, 2009 by Governor Schwarzenegger. The Electronic Discovery Act (“the Act”) establishes procedures for litigants when obtaining discovery of electronically stored information in California. The Act amends the California Code of Civil Procedure, effective immediately, by adding provisions specifically related to electronic discovery.

Modeled after similar electronic discovery rules in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Act strives to strike a balance between making ESI available to a requesting party without over-burdening a responding party who utilizes mass quantities of ESI in its normal course of business. For more information, please read Reed Smith's full alert.

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This post was written by Melissa A. Geist and Steven B. Roosa.

On May 29, 2008, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a lengthy and noteworthy ruling regarding the discovery of “electronically stored information” or “ESI.” The court held that the defendants waived the attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine with respect to 165 separate documents. See Victor Stanley Inc. v. Creative Pipe Inc., Civil Action No. KJG-06-2662, 2008 WL 2221841 (D.Md. 2008). The case is particularly instructive because it describes in detail the multiple steps that a litigant should take in order to (1) protect against the inadvertent disclosure of privileged ESI; (2) preserve the privileged status of ESI in the event that it is inadvertently disclosed; and (3) defend the methodology used to search for relevant ESI.

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