In re Shipman
- Court
- Texas Supreme Court (State high court)
- Decided
- 2018
- Citation
- 540 S.W.3d 562 (Tex. 2018)
- Standard applied
- Tex. R. Civ. P. 196.4 — forensic examination requires more than suspicion
What the court held
The Texas Supreme Court conditionally granted mandamus and ordered the trial court to vacate an order requiring a party to turn over his computer and other electronic devices for forensic examination. A suspicion that the responding party was unable or unwilling to search his own computer diligently did not justify the order.
Why
The responding party had produced documents twice, had located further files in a backup folder on a replacement computer after an earlier machine crashed, and had explained through sworn affidavits that older records were destroyed under a retention practice years before suit. On that record the court found no showing of a default in the obligation to search sufficient to justify direct access to the devices.
Our reading — not the court’s words
Why this matters in practice
Shipman confirms that Weekley Homes is not a dead letter and shows how a responding party defeats an imaging demand: produce, document the search, explain the gaps under oath, and account for the hardware history. The decisive facts are ordinary records-management facts, not forensic ones. Conversely, a movant needs concrete evidence of a failed or dishonest search — the sort of evidence that exists in Jones v. Riot Hospitality and is absent here.
This paragraph is Legal Cyber Academy’s editorial assessment of the decision’s practical importance. The court said none of it. For what the court actually said, read the opinion.
Additional detail
Tags: forensic imaging · mandamus · retention policy · diligent search
Cited 28times in CourtListener’s corpus at the time this entry was compiled. Treat it as a rough measure of influence, not of correctness.
Other decisions on discovery & imaging
- Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc.District Court, D. Maryland · 2010After finding a sustained pattern of deletion, use of wiping software, and failure to preserve devices, the court granted the sanctions motion in part: it recom…
- Goodman v. Praxair Services, Inc.District Court, D. Maryland · 2009The court found a breach of the duty to preserve relevant e-mail and documents and imposed a permissive adverse-inference instruction — one allowing but not req…
- Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC (Zubulake V)District Court, S.D. New York · 2004The court imposed sanctions on UBS for failing to preserve and produce relevant e-mail, including an adverse-inference instruction as to messages deleted after…
- United States v. UlbrichtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit · 2017The Second Circuit affirmed the exclusion of both of the defendant's proposed expert witnesses in the Silk Road prosecution because his expert notices were unti…
- In re Weekley Homes, L.P.Texas Supreme Court · 2009The Texas Supreme Court granted mandamus and vacated an order permitting the requesting party's forensic experts direct access to employees' electronic storage…
- Pension Committee of the University of Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of America Securities, LLCDistrict Court, S.D. New York · 2010The court found that several plaintiffs had failed to issue written litigation holds or to preserve and collect relevant records, and imposed graduated sanction…
Summarised from the opinion as retrieved from CourtListener. Reference material, not legal advice. Back to the repository.