Source: https://www.ediscoverylawalert.com/author/psaso/page/2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 01:46:57+00:00

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We previously reported on the New York District Attorney’s attempts to obtain tweets by a criminal defendant in People of the State of New York v. Harris, Index No. 080152/2011 and the corresponding challenges asserted by the individual user/defendant and Twitter itself on May 23 and June 7. Defendant is accused of disorderly conduct for allegedly having blocked traffic during an Occupy Wall Street protest. The District Attorney has sought defendant’s simultaneous tweets that allegedly will undermine his defense that he was forced onto the street by police officers. The trial court first denied defendant’s motion to quash the subpoena served on the social networking site Twitter and then denied Twitter’s own motion to quash.
We previously reported on the New York District Attorney’s attempts to obtain tweets by a criminal defendant in People of the State of New York v. Harris, Index No. 080152/2011 on May 23, 2012 and the corresponding challenges asserted by the individual user/defendant and Twitter itself on June 7, 2012. The Court first denied defendant’s motion to quash the subpoena served on the social networking site Twitter, ruling that the defendant, charged with disorderly conduct after allegedly marching onto the Brooklyn Bridge during an Occupy Wall Street protest, had no reasonable expectation of privacy in communications of this type and lacked standing to seek the protections of the Stored Communications Act. Seeing its user fail in his efforts to quash the subpoena, Twitter took the matter into its own hands, moving for the same relief as defendant and ultimately obtaining the same result. The more recent decision, which addressed Twitter’s challenges, raised considerable buzz in legal and social media circles as a case of first impression because it concerned (1) a criminal rather than a civil matter and (2) a motion by a social media site rather than an individual user.
A few weeks ago, we reported on the recent decision of the People of the State of New York v. Harris, Index No. 080152/2011, (Crim. Ct. Apr. 20, 2012). There, the Court denied defendant Malcolm Harris’s motion to quash the District Attorney’s subpoena requiring the production of defendant’s user information, email addresses, as well as any Tweets posted for a four-month period from Twitter, Inc., all in connection with criminal charges pending against Mr. Harris due to his alleged involvement in an Occupy Wall Street protest. You can read our most recent blog post on this case from May 23. Twitter subsequently moved to quash the Court’s order on May 7, 2012, on the basis that the order imposes an undue burden upon it pursuant to Section 2703(d) of the Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 2701-2711) (the “SCA”), which provides that “[a] court issuing an order pursuant to this section, on a motion made promptly by the service provider, may quash or modify such order, if. . . compliance with such order otherwise would cause an undue burden on such provider.” Twitter argues that compliance with the Court’s order compelling the production of defendant’s Twitter user information imposes an undue burden for at least three reasons.
In a recent case before the Criminal Court of the State of New York, the prosecution served a subpoena duces tecum on Twitter, Inc., seeking user information including the e-mail address and Tweets for a two-month period under the Twitter account, @destructuremal, which was believed to be that of the defendant Malcolm Harris. The People of the State of New York v. Harris, Index No. 080152/2011, (Crim. Ct. Apr. 20, 2012). Mr. Harris had been charged with disorderly conduct after allegedly marching on to the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge during an Occupy Wall Street protest. The prosecution sought to refute Mr. Harris’s expected defense that the police led him into stepping on to the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge, by examining his contradictory, contemporaneous Tweets.
The Judicial Improvements Committee of the Southern District of New York issued a report announcing the initiation of a Pilot Project Regarding Case Management Techniques for Complex Civil Cases (the “JIC Report”) in October 2011. The pilot project, which became effective on November 1, 2011, is designed to run for 18 months and for now, applies only to specific matters designated as “complex cases.” The project, which seeks to enhance the caliber of judicial case management, arose out of recommendations from the May 2010 Duke Conference on Civil Procedure and E-Discovery. This blog posting focuses on that portion of the pilot program devoted to the discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”).
As discussed in a recent post, there exists a dichotomy between the New York state and federal courts with respect to which party should bear the cost of producing inaccessible data. A recent New York Supreme (Trial) Court decision held that New York’s standard “requester pays” rule only applies to data that is not “readily available.” Silverman v. Shaoul, 2010 N.Y. Slip Op. 20507, 2010 N.Y. Misc. (Sup. Ct. New York Cty. Nov. 3, 2010).
A recent article in the New York Law Journal by the secretary of the e-discovery committee of the Commercial and Federal Litigation Section of the New York State Bar Association underscored the confusion that remains in New York courts with respect to which party is responsible for bearing the cost of electronic document production. The article discusses cases that, on the one hand, state “what many have long believed was the rule in New York,” that “generally, the cost of [electronic] document production is borne by the party requesting the production.” Response Personnel, Inc. v. Aschenbrenner, 77 A.D.3d 518, 519, 909 N.Y.S.2d 433, 434 (1st Dept. 2010) (emphasis added). On the other hand, the First Department has also held that they “see no reason to deviate from the general rule that, during the course of the action, each party should bear the expenses it incurs in responding to discovery requests.” Clarendon Nat. Ins. Co. v. Atl. Risk Mgmt., Inc., 59 A.D.3d 284, 286, 73 N.Y.S.2d 69, 70 (1st Dept. 2009) (citing Waltzer v. Tradescape & Co., L.L.C., 31 A.D.3d 302, 819 N.Y.S.2d 38 (1st Dept. 2006)).

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