Litigation Support

Hat tip to friend and colleage Dave Ries for sending this along.

The eDiscovery Daily Blog recently reported that sanctions in e-discovery have reached an all time high. Not especially surprising, but it sure is time to spread the gospel. The post summarizes a Duke Law Journal article which analyzed 401 cases involving motions for sanctions in ESI-related cases. In 230 of those cases, sanctions were granted.

It is no shock to learn that failure to preserve relevant ESI is the most common reason for sanctions, and perhaps not surprising that defendants are sanctioned roughly three times as often as plaintiffs.

For those of you who are statistic mavens, there are a number of interesting stats in the articles - the post and the article are well worth a read. For those of us who teach e-discovery regularly, these statistics need to be highlighted constantly - lawyers are still "not getting it" (after all these years) and judges are clearly tired of rapping knuckles. Recently, the severity of the penalties has increased, clearly signalling judicial intolerance for attorney incompetence and misconduct in e-discovery.

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