Discoverability of Secretly Recorded Conversations
In Whitney v. City of Milan, Tennessee, 2010 WL 2011663 (W.D. Tenn. May 20, 2010), the plaintiff allegedly secretly recorded conversations with witnesses. The district court affirmed the magistrate judge’s order requiring the plaintiff to produce the audiotapes prior to the depositions of those witnesses.
By Work Product Doctrine and Claims Adjusters
A recent case from the Eastern District of Tennessee, King v. CVS Pharmacy, Inc., et al., 2010 WL 1643256 (E.D. Tenn. Apr. 21, 2010), provides insight into the work product doctrine as it applies to insurance companies. The plaintiff moved to compel documents generated by a claims adjuster working on plaintiff’s worker’s compensation claim, arguing that they were prepared in the ordinary course of business. The defendant argued that the documents were protected by the work product doctrine because they were prepared “in anticipation of litigation.”
Federal Tax Returns Subject to Discovery
In Smith, et al. v. MPIRE Holdings, LLC, et al., 2010 WL 711797 (M.D. Tenn., Feb. 22, 2010), Magistrate Judge John S. Bryant ordered three individual defendants to produce copies of federal tax returns or, alternatively, to sign IRS forms 4506 in order to allow opposing counsel to obtain copies of the tax returns. Citing decisions from other states, the Court held that the tax returns were relevant to the issues in the case. The allegations were that the defendants had swindled plaintiffs out of $200,000 by means of a bogus investment scheme.
e-Discovery Update – Zubulake Revisited
Six years after the series of Zubulake decisions which established ground rules for preserving electronic discovery and also regarding how to allocate the costs of producing electronically stored information, the Southern District of New York has issued a new opinion about the duty to preserve electronic evidence.
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