Ok…so I was gone a little longer than intended…let's get down to business.  We have four cases to examine this month.

United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing,
Inc., 2009 WL 2605378 (Cal. App. 9 Dist. Aug. 26, 2009).

This is an extremely important fourth amendment case that arises out of the Major League Baseball steroid investigation.  The California 9th Circuit has established new guidelines for the search and seizure of ESI.  A must-read, in my opinion.

In re Weekley Homes, L.P., 2009 Tex. LEXIS 630 (Tex. 2009).

This is a very good case out of Texas regarding an overly broad request for ESI.  The court likened computer data to that held in file cabinets and reasoned (I think eloquently) that it is highly intrusive to expect easy access to employees' ESI when these employees are indirectly-relevant to the litigation at hand.  The court stated that the least intrusive means necessary should always be utilized.

Se. Mech. Servs., Inc. v. Brody, 2009 WL 2883057 (M.D. Fla. Aug. 31, 2009).

There have been a series of decisions from this case and I'm numbering this one "Brody IV".  As you know, I've avoided most sanction cases, however, this one resulted in an adverse inference by the court due to the defendant's intentional and deliberate wiping of BlackBerry data.  We all had to know a case like this was coming…

Gurevich v. Gurevich, 2009 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1045 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2009).

This case should send shivers down your spine, due to its greater implications regarding privacy and were it to ever be applied more broadly, such as in a business environment.

Wife used husbands password to access his email and found incriminating information to use in their divorce proceedings.  I'll let you decide for yourself what you think of the court's opinion.