Court: ignorance about e-discovery is no excuse.

• Position: E-DISCOVERY

For years attorneys have been advised to become better educated about the ins and outs of electronically stored information (ESI). Failure to do so has recently cost one California attorney $165,000.

According to an article in Lexology, a California appellate court recently imposed the monetary sanction against an attorney who didn't follow directions well when instructed to allow forensic examinations of her computers during a class action suit. When ordered to produce the records in question in their "native format," the attorney promptly converted the records into PDF and deleted the original Word documents. The trial court then ordered the forensic examination of the...