Changes to FRCP 8, 26 and 56 Just Around The Corner

November 16, 2010

December 1, 2010 marks the date that some important changes to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure will take effect.

The changes will affect the following:

1. Rule 8:  General Rules of Pleading  (Last amended Aug. 1, 1987)

2. Rule 26:  Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Regarding Discovery (Last amended Dec. 1, 1993)

3. Rule 56: Summary Judgment (Last amended Dec. 1, 2009)

As an expert witness, Rule 26 is the change that has most impact to me and how I interact with my cases and my clients.  For this reason I have focused on outlining the more significant changes.  I have provided a link to the full House Document 111-111 at the bottom of this post.

The biggest change is in the wording and interpretation of Rule 26(a)(2)(C) regarding disclosures of draft copies and communication of the expert witness.  While the previous 1993 interpretation meant that all drafts, notes and communications are to be disclosed, the new Rule 26 fixes this interpretation.

Citing the “profoundly practical” argument for extending work-product protection to certain communications and all drafts of the written report, the Civil Rules Committee went on to point out the loss of “robust communication” between the attorney and the expert [1] (we all know the wild gyrations we take to avoid discoverable material) , the “tortuous steps to avoid having the expert take any notes”, and the “often futile” attempts to show that the expert was unduly influenced by the retaining lawyer. [2]

On a real-life level, I never take notes unless they are to document methodology, and unless given specific permission I avoid email and other written communication to my retaining attorney.  Report generation (unless it violates a specific order) means that I generate a report without saving it and have a remote viewing session with my retaining attorney.  This tends to create:

  • Extra phone calls to verify recollection of information,
  • Unnecessary phone tag,
  • Additional report generation time, and
  • A decrease in the retaining litigant’s view of the efficiency and effectiveness of the process.

Here are some of the highlights of the Rule 26 changes that fix the above issues:

  1. 26(a)(2)(B)(ii) has been amended to read that disclosure is to include all “facts or data considered by the witness in forming” their opinions.  This changes the previous wording of “the data or other information” verbiage that was used to imply all communications, written notes and drafts.
  2. The “Time to Disclose Expert Testimony” has been shifted to 26(a)(2)(D) and specifies the time limit for rebuttal evidence for both 26(a)(2)(B) and 26(a)(2)(C).  The new 26(a)(2)(C) deals with witnesses that are not required to provide a report.
  3. 26 (b)(4)(B) protects “drafts of any report or disclosure required under 26(a)(2), regardless of the form in which the draft is recorded.”  Essentially this makes the verbiage change in 26(a)(2) explicit.
  4. 26 (b)(4)(C) provides protection for “communications between the party’s attorney and any witness required to provide a report under Rule 26(a)(2)(B), regardless of the form of the communications”.  There are three types of communications that are exempted from this protection, though:
  • Communications that relate to compensation for the expert’s study or testimony;
  • Communications that identify facts or data that the party’s attorney provided and that the expert considered in forming the opinions to be expressed (emphasis added)
  • Communications that identify assumptions that the party’s attorney provided and the the expert relied on in forming the opinions to be expressed (emphasis added)

In short – better communication, less wild gyrations by the experts and their retaining attorney and shorter deposition without all the attempts to show undue influence. I was excited to see this discussed at Sedona and am thrilled to see the results just around the corner.

The only thing I will miss is the competitive advantage actually knowing FRCP gave me in this area vs. the numerous experts that didn’t seem to take the time.

The benefits, though, definitely outweigh this one advantage.

The link to the Supreme Court’s Approved Rules page is here:

Approved Rules Page

Direct links to the component PDF documents are below:

Rules (Clean Version)

Excerpt of the Judicial Conference Report

Excerpt of the Report of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules

[1] 111th Congress, 2d Session House Document 111-111, page 35
Civil Rules Committee Report 5/8/2009, page 3

[2] 111th Congress, 2d Session House Document 111-111, page 25
Excerpt From The Report of the Judicial Conference 12/18/2009, page 3

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A Simple Plan to Ruin Your Boss: Plant Child Porn On His PC

August 10, 2010

A simple plan to ruin your boss: plant child porn on his PC.

This occurred in the UK in 2006 (it is just now working its way through the courts), and seems extreme.  The reality is that planted evidence can occur in many different forms:  Planted documents, images, and even emails.

While the deception in the UK case was broken through cell phone activity (the perpetrator made an “anonymous” phone call, and had been heard bragging about his exploits at a BBQ), a good forensic examiner goes beyond simple modified, accessed and created times to review other system information that backs up the method of arrival of the information on the system itself:

  • The insertion of USB devices: USB devices can leave quite a trail on a system, including the device manufacturer, type, even sometimes serial numbers.  Further activity supporting the insertion of the device can sometimes be correlated between file history analysis and searches for activity surrounding the specific device ID.
  • Metadata contained within the purported documents: Images, videos, audio files, PDF documents and other file types often have information regarding the date of creation (not necessarily introduction to the system), authorship, serial or license numbers of the product used, sometimes even information about the system that created them.
  • System files: Sometimes the introduction or generation of a file triggers other supporting files on the system.  Examination of these files can tell an investigator whether the file information matches up with what the system knows about the file.
  • Surrounding activity: Other activity on the system related to usage can be an indicator as well.  For example: If a file was supposedly downloaded from the internet, one would expect to see certain other activity surrounding the download if it was generated by the user.

A lot of these same techniques can be used to attack or defend other claims of the so-called “trojan defense” (aka “A Virus must have done it”).

Researching deliberate obfuscation CAN be a challenge, but in situations similar to the UK case a client is not at all dead in the water if an information forensics analyst is competent and able to look at the “Evidence Beyond the Hard Drive”™.

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Kwame Kilpatrick Asks Skytel for $100M

March 10, 2009

It is being reported that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is going after Skytel for the release of the text messages that led to the settlement of the police whistleblower lawsuit against him.

(source: The Detroit News)

It appears that the grounds for this action is the Stored Communications Act.  As a non-attorney I am guessing that this will boil down to a few factors:

  1. Was the police department involved in the production of the text messages (4th amendment),
  2. Was the contract with Skytel to provide messaging services, or storage/retrieval and reporting?

The Stored Communication Act does differentiate between a provider of services, and a provider of storage, so the Skytel contract wording will likely make a difference.

With all of the Kwame Drama aside, this could actually be interesting for providers, contract attorneys, e-discovery and forensics folks as well.

Here is a reference to another case with similar characteristics:

Quon v. Arch Wireless

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