An Interview with Judge Paul Grimm, Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge, 3 of 3

http://ow.ly/74anX

This is part 3 of a 3 part series of an interview with U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grimm, provided by the discovery brain blog.

The discovery brain blog poses the following questions to eDiscovery expert, and Magistrate Judge Paul Grimm.

• Do judges differentiate in terms of severity in sanctions between people that knowingly violate eDiscovery laws or those that just do shoddy eDiscovery without malintent?
• Recently there has been discussion on whether or not the federal system should move towards a uniform rule of preservation. Do you see the federal system doing that?
• What do you think is the most significant trend now in eDiscovery? What do you think practitioners should be focused on?

As Judge Grimm states, "Some circuits say that you can’t impose the most onerous sanctions unless there is bad faith. Others like my circuit say that even if you are merely negligent, if your mere negligence results in complete destruction and loss of evidence that your adversary needs to defend or prove itself, however innocently it may have happened, they have been prejudiced so greatly that sanctions are still appropriate."

Judge Grimm's remarks conclude with the following statement, "...courts are starting to realize that eDiscovery is a cooperative effort to find the facts from which you can settle, litigate or resolve on motions for cases. I think over time with enough good will, all the stakeholders will realize that the dispute resolution system, that has been the hallmark of the rule of law in this country, to be worth the regard that we hold for it, has got to be flexible enough to adapt going forward to meet the way in which the people that it serves does its own business. I think that the awareness is there and the challenge given the volume of cases and the speed with which technology changes, is to make sure you have flexible rules and procedures in place as technology changes."