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One benefit of living in the digital age is that we no longer need to travel to our attorney’s office to place a wet signature on an important contract or mortgage document. Parties now regularly execute multi-million dollar real estate transactions, non-competition agreements, and stock purchases, among other agreements, using digital signature applications. The most often used application, DocuSign, boasts that its solution enables you to electronically sign while meeting the requirements of the ESIGN Act and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act in the United States, in addition to complying with most other laws in countries where electronic signatures are recognized.

As trial lawyers who often encounter these agreements after a deal has soured, we now have an additional evidentiary burden as we lay a foundation in court and authenticate these documents which the parties “signed” digitally. As with traditional wet signatures, we can anticipate that in some instances we will need to prove that the obligee digitally “signed” the document after he or she denies doing so.

DocuSign offers multiple levels of security and authentication that allow a sender to determine how thoroughly a signer must identify him or herself, including using email, access codes, SMS, phone, and knowledge based identity checks. In these cases, reviewing the authentication data is the digital equivalent of hiring a handwriting expert to authenticate a contract signature.
Continue Reading Authenticating Digital Signatures at Trial

On January 4, 2019, the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District issued an opinion reminding us that under California law, tax returns are privileged and improper disclosure of them can even potentially rise to tortious invasion of privacy claims in overturning a demurrer as to that claim. Strawn v. Morris, Polich & Purdy, LLP, No. A150562, 2019 Cal. App. LEXIS 9 (Ct. App. Jan. 4, 2019).

Federal and state tax returns have been held to be privileged from disclosure under California law. Id at *13; Wilson v. Superior Court, 63 Cal. App. 3rd 825, 828 (1976); Webb v. Standard Oil Co., 49 Cal. 2nd 509, 512-513 (1957).  As highlighted by the opinion, the purpose of the privilege “is to encourage voluntary filing of tax returns and truthful reporting of income, and thus to facilitate tax collection.” Strawn at *13; Weingarten v. Superior Court, 102 Cal. App. 4th 268, 274 (2002); Webb at 513. 
Continue Reading The Privileged Nature of Tax Returns in California

Court Denies Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel

In Mirmina v. Genpact LLC, 2017 BL 260425, D. Conn., Civil No. 3:16CV00614 (AWT), the Court denied Plaintiff’s motion to compel additional responsive electronic communications despite the fact that an individual directly involved in the underlying claims of the suit “self-identified” potentially responsive emails.  The Court based its…

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The Eleventh Circuit recently refused to set aside a bank fraud conviction, rejecting defendant’s argument that advances in technology should change the way court’s adjudicate alleged violations of attorney-client privilege.  While the appellate court agreed that defendant’s attorney-client privilege was breached by federal prosecutors, the court refused to overturn defendant’s 78-month sentence because he had failed to meet his burden to show he was prejudiced by the privilege breach.

The defendant, Stephen DeLuca, the president and sole shareholder of Delco Oil, Inc. in Florida, was convicted (after a mistrial) of fraudulently submitting false statement to lending institutions regarding the company’s accounts receivable and inventory and obtaining loans on reliance on the fraudulent information.

When the FBI raided Defendant’s office and seized computers and hard drives prior to his indictment, DeLuca notified the government that the data included privileged communications. The government offered, and DeLuca signed, a stipulation providing a procedure to exclude privileged communications from the investigation.  It provided that an FBI computer analyst would segregate any communications to or from DeLuca’s attorneys based on a list of attorneys provided by DeLuca.  These segregated communications would then go to an FBI “filter team” who were not members of the prosecution team, who would notify DeLuca if it believed any communications were not privileged, or that the privilege had been waived.  DeLuca could then dispute the determination, and the communications at issue would not be provided to the prosecution team until a magistrate judge ruled as to privilege.
Continue Reading Eleventh Circuit Rejects Criminal Defendant’s Claim That Digital Technology Requires Increased Scrutiny Of Federal Prosecutors’ Improper Review of Privileged Emails

In Hyles v. New York City, 10 Civ. 3119 (AT)(AJP) (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 1, 2016), the court addressed the question of whether the City could be “forced” to use technology assisted review (predictive coding) to identify discoverable information when the City itself preferred to use keyword searching. “The short answer [was] a decisive ‘NO.’”

After consulting with an e-discovery vendor, Plaintiff’s counsel in this case “proposed that the City should use TAR as a ‘more cost-effective and efficient method of obtaining ESI from Defendants.’” “The City declined, both because of cost and concerns that the parties, based on their history of scope negotiations, would not be able to collaborate to develop the seed set for a TAR process.”  The issue was referred to U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck for resolution.
Continue Reading Judge Peck Won’t Force Use of TAR