Motorola Solutions, Inc. v. Hytera Communications Corp.
- Court
- District Court, N.D. Illinois (Federal district court)
- Decided
- 2019
- Citation
- 365 F. Supp. 3d 916 (N.D. Ill. 2019)
- Standard applied
- FRCP 26(b)(1), 34 — proportionality of a forensic inspection
What the court held
The court denied a renewed motion to compel forensic inspection of an opponent's computers and network servers located overseas. Forensic examination of a party's computers is not a routine matter even domestically, the request was made far too late in the discovery period to be completed, and on this record the inspection would have been cumulative and disproportionate.
Why
The court traced the movant's year-long pattern of raising and abandoning the request, and noted that the proposed protocol — imaging, examination, a detailed forensic report and chain-of-custody documentation — could not realistically be carried out in the weeks remaining. It quoted the Advisory Committee's caution against routine access to an opponent's devices, and the Sedona Principles' warning that civil litigation should not treat information systems as crime scenes justifying forensic investigation at every opportunity.
Our reading — not the court’s words
Why this matters in practice
This is the most quotable modern statement of judicial resistance to forensic imaging in civil cases, and it is worth knowing whichever side of the motion you are on. The decisive factors were timing and cumulativeness rather than privacy, which means a well-founded imaging request has to come early and has to identify what it will show that existing production does not. The Sedona passage it quotes is the argument opposing counsel will make, so it is better to have read it first.
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 inspection · proportionality · Sedona Principles · trade secrets
Cited 92times 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.