Intellectual Property Law

Two Articles of Interest (by Judges) in the Boston Bar Journal: Continuity and Change in the Business Litigation Session and Lessons for E-Discovery Practitioners

By Lee.Gesmer

Two articles in the September/October issue of the Boston Bar Journal (pdf file on BBA site) are of particular interest.

In the first, entitled “Continuity and Change in the Busiess Litigation Session” Superior Court Judges Judith Fabricant, Ralph Gants and Stephen Neal discuss the Business Litigation Session (BLS) as this session approaches its eighth anniversary and continues its transition to new leadership following the retirement of Judge Allan van Gestel, who ran the BLS for its first seven years.

Some interesting statistics cited in the article:

• The BLS (both sessions) takes about 300 cases per year. The court has approved 95% of applications for entry.
• In each of the two sessions (BLS1 and BLS2) there are fewer than 500 cases pending, as compared with over 800 cases in the other civil sessions in Suffolk County (on average).

As a reminder, links to the BLS Administrative Directives, “Formal Guidence” memos and Procedural Orders are here.

In the second article Federal Magistrate Judge Robert Collings discusses the “discovery saga” in the Qualcomm v. Broadcom patent case in San Diego. In that case is was discovered during trial that highly relevant documents had not been produced during discovery. After trial, it was determined that over 300,000 relevant documents had not been produced. Needless to say, when that happens the “sugar hits the fan,” with awards of attorney’s fees and sanctions to follow.

Judge Collings is our federal district’s judicial e-discovery expert, and his commentary on this case (with his “analysis and lessons learned”) is essential reading.

Full post as published by Mass Law Blog on October 08, 2008 (boomark / email).