Autotech Techs. Ltd. Partnership v. Automationdirect.com, Inc., No. 05 C 5488, 2008 WL 783303 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 25, 2008) (Cole, Mag. J.).*
Judge Cole granted in part plaintiff Autotech’s motion to compel communications between defendant Automationdirect.com, Inc. (“ADC”) and any third party regarding ADC’s competing C-More touch screen panel. The Court held that ADC need not produce documents related to source code for the C-More product. The Court previously denied Autotech’s motion to amend its complaint adding claims related to that source code. But the Court held that ADC’s third party communications could be relevant to show whether ADC has complied with its contractual obligation to use its best efforts to sell Autotech’s product, or if its C-More sales efforts interfered with sales of Autotech’s products. The Court also held that any communication evidencing customer confusion must be produced.
Practice Tip: Do not employ new arguments in reply briefs. The Court did not consider Autotech’s reply brief because it changed the scope of its argument on reply. Autotech’s opening brief sought ADC’s third party communications with the exception of those regarding ADC’s source code because claims regarding ADC’s software were not in the case. But on reply, Autotech also sought the source code related communications.
*Click here for more about this case in the Blog’s archives.

Continue Reading Incomplete Discovery No Sanctionable Because it Complied With Requestors’ Expert Request

Am. Fam. Mutual Ins. Co. v. Roth, No. 05 C 3839 & 3869, 2008 WL 168693 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 15, 2008) (Guzman, J.).
Judge Guzman adopted Magistrate Judge Cole’s Report and Reconsideration in full, holding defendants in contempt for violating the Court’s injunctions requiring that defendants return various customer information taken from plaintiff, defendant’s former employer – click here for more on the prior opinions in the Blog’s archives. It was defendants’ responsibility to ensure that defendants’ former counsel, who had copies of relevant documents, comply with the injunction by turning the documents over to plaintiff. The fact that defendants did not have direct control over their former counsel’s copies did not matter.
Additionally, the Court held that it did not matter that plaintiff did not originally make a “big deal” out of defendant’s non-compliance. Defendants argued that they presumed there was no need to comply with the Court’s injunctions because nobody was making a “big deal” about the return of the materials. That presumption was flawed. Neither party moved to modify either the preliminary injunction or the amended preliminary injunction. Thus, defendants had a duty to comply with the Court’s injunctions as written.
Practice Tip: Do not fall in to the trap of believing that substantial compliance with a court order is sufficient. While that could be true in some cases, you should always contact the court if you have a problem complying with an order. Compliance with orders is one case where the adage that you are better off asking forgiveness than asking permission does not hold true.

Continue Reading Violating Injunctions is a “Big Deal”

Autotech Techs. Ltd. Ptnshp. V. Automation Direct.com Inc., No. 05 C 5488, 2007 WL 2746654 (N.D.Ill. Sep. 18, 2007) (Cole, Mag. J.).*
Judge Cole denied plaintiffs’ (collectively “Autotech”) motion to compel production of defendant Koyo Electronics’ (“Koyo”) touchscreen source code. In Autotech’s Third Amended Complaint – filed without the leave of Court required by Fed. R. Civ. P. 15, but later allowed by Chief Judge Holderman – Autotech alleged that defendants infringed Autotech’s copyrights in its touchscreen display images. Autotech also alluded to source code infringement, but did not explicitly claim it.
In a later interrogatory response, Autotech stated that it was not claiming that defendants’ source code infringed Autotech’s copyrights, but reserved the right to amend the complaint adding such charges. Because Autotech had not sought leave to add source code infringement claims to its complaint, the Court held that the requested source code was not relevant and production was not required. The Court also noted that the request seeking source code was improper because it was served less than thirty days before the fact discovery close in violation of Local Rule 16.1. It did not matter that the deadline was ultimately extended because the extension was granted after the original fact discovery close and after the deadline for responding to the document requests.
Practice tip: Whenever a Court issues a fact discovery close, get out your calendar, count backward thirty days and mark the last day for serving discovery requests. You would be amazed at how many litigators do not take note of this important date.
*Click here for more on this case in the Blog’s archives.

Continue Reading Discovery Request Due Dates Must Fall Within the Discovery Period

Flentye v. Kathrein, No. 06 C 3492, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Oct 2, 2007) (Cole, Mag. J.).*
Judge Cole continued defendants’ motion to compel for one week because defendants had not conducted a Local Rule 37.2 conference before filing their motion. But the Court also provided its thoughts on the prosecution of discovery, both in this specific case and generally. The Court noted that after one year of discovery, “not a single document was produced in response to the 70 paragraph document request!”
But what is most interesting about the opinion is the Court’s quotes on various discovery issues. On discovery generally:
“[D]iscovery is the bane of modern federal litigation.” Rossetto v. Pabst Brewing Co., Inc., 217 F.3d 539, 542 (7th Cir. 2000). It is intrusive, unpleasant, time-consuming and costly. It is, like life itself, “nasty [and] brutish …” Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapt XIII. Unfortunately, it is not generally “short.”
On Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(4) sanctions:
The great operative principle of Rule 37(a)(4) is that the loser pays. Fee shifting, when the judge must rule on discovery disputes, encourages their voluntary resolution and curtails the ability of litigants to use the legal process to heap detriments on adversaries without regarding to the merits of the claim.
Quoting Rickels v. City of South Bend, Indiana, 33 F.3d 785, 786 (7th Cir. 1994) (Easterbrook, J.) (internal quotes omitted).
On the less-than-civil nature of “modern” litigation:
Unfortunately, what has occurred here thus far is not uncommon, and the often needless disputes arising in discovery are but the current manifestation of the difficulties about which Learned Hand lamented almost three quarters of a century ago. In an address to the Bar Association of the City of New York in 1921, Hand, then a young district judge, spoke about the “atmosphere of contention over trifles, the unwillingness to conceded what ought to be conceded, and to proceed to the things which matter. Courts have fallen out of repute; many of you avoid them whenever you can, and rightly. About trials hang a suspicion of trickery and a sense of a result depending upon cajolery or worse. I wish I could say that it was all unmerited. After now some dozen years of experience I must say that as a litigant I should dread a lawsuit beyond almost anything else short of sickness and death.” Lectures on Legal Topics, Learned Hand, The Deficiencies Of Trials To Reach the Heart of the Matter, 105 (The MacMillan Co. 1926).
On bad blood between litigants:
What Chief Judge Easterbrook recently said in another case seems to apply here: “There is a grudge match.” Redwood v. Dobson, 476, F.3d 462 (7th Cir. 2007). The parties are free to entertain whatever animus they possess towards each other. Judges have no business in trying to regulate thought and emotion. But they do have an obligation to regulate how parties deal with each other and with ensuring that they comply with the discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
* For more about this case in the Blog’s archives click here.

Continue Reading Court Waxes Eloquent on Discovery

Coilcraft, Inc. v. Inductor Warehouse, Inc., No. 98 C 0140, 2007 WL 2728754 (N.D. Ill. Sep. 13, 2007) (Guzman, J.).
Judge Guzman conducted a Fed. R. Civ. P. 72 de novo review of Magistrate Judge Cole’s report which recommended that the Court hold defendant in contempt for violating the Court’s permanent injunction limiting defendant’s use of plaintiff’s Coilcraft mark (click here for further discussion in the Blog’s archive). The Court adopted Judge Cole’s Report in its entirety and gave plaintiff fourteen days to submit a proposed order and proof of its attorneys’ fees and costs related to this motion. The Court also held that Judge Cole was not required to hold an evidentiary hearing before issuing the Report because there were no genuine issues of material fact. The dispute was governed by the language of the Court’s injunction which was not disputed. And the only issue was whether defendant’s advertisements, the contents of which were not disputed, violated the injunction – a matter of law.

Continue Reading Evidentiary Hearing Not Required for Contempt Ruling Based Upon Undisputed Facts

Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Montrose Wholesale Candies & Sundries, Inc., No. 03 C 5311 & 4844, 2007 WL 2580491 (N.D. Ill. Sep. 10, 2007) (Cole, Mag. J.).
Judge Cole recommended awarding plaintiff $2.5M in statutory damages. The Court had previously entered a Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(b) default judgment against defendants for sales of counterfeit Newport cigarettes in violation of the Lanham Act.* The Court recommended that a damages hearing was not necessary because of defendants’ four year pattern of avoiding discovery obligations leading to a default judgment, including failing to produce damages documents. Having actively avoided producing the information for four years, defendants were not now entitled to seek opportunities to present evidence in their defense. Furthermore, the Court reported that a $2.5 M award was reasonable. $2.5M was half of plaintiff’s estimate of defendants’ infringing sales and it was half of the potential $1M statutory award for each of the five marks defendants infringed.
* For more on this case, see the Blog’s archives.

Continue Reading $2.5M Statutory Damages Award Set Without Hearing

Am Fam. Mutual Ins., Co. v. Roth, No. 05 C 3839, 2007 WL 2410074 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 16, 2007) (Cole, Mag. J.).
Judge Cole granted in part plaintiff’s motion to strike evidence and bar its use. The documents at issue were commission statements including plaintiff’s customer information. The Court previously ordered defendants to return to plaintiff all documents in its possession including plaintiff’s customer information in this trade secret matter. After that order, defendants filed the commission statements, including customer information, with the clerk as an exhibit to another document. The Court held that filing of the commission statements was public disclosure which violated the Court’s order that defendants not retain or disclose such information. But the Court held that plaintiff’s preferred sanction for retaining and filing the documents, barring their use as evidence at trial, was not proportional with defendants’ wrong in keeping the document and filing them publicly with the Court.

Continue Reading Striking Evidence Too Strong a Remedy for Wrongly Retained Evidence

Fast Food Gourmet, Inc. v. Little Lady Foods, Inc., No. 05 C 6022, 2007 WL 2156665 (N.D. Ill. Jul. 26, 2007) (Cole, M.J.)
Judge Cole granted in part defendant Little Lady Foods’ (“LLF”) Fed. R. Civ. P. 37 motion to bar evidence of allegedly late-identified trade secrets. Plaintiff Fast Food Gourmet (“FFG”) originally identified four trade secret elements of its process for making thin crust frozen pizza. FFG’s Vice President of Operations Crause identified four additional elements during his deposition. And FFG later identified two additional elements. LLF argued that FFG should be limited to the first four elements because FFG never updated its interrogatory responses to include the six additional elements. The Court held that the four additional elements disclosed during the deposition had “otherwise been made known” pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(e) and, therefore, were not required to be added to FFG’s interrogatory responses. The Court excluded the other two elements. FFG argued that it had identified the elements by identifying documents containing the elements in its interrogatory responses pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 33(d). But the Court held that the documents FFG identified only identified the two elements sporadically, and in connection with elements that were not trade secrets. This, combined with Crause’s testimony that he had identified all of the trade secret elements, made FFG’s Rule 33(d) statements insufficient.
Practice Tip: Rule 33(d) is often seen as a simple escape from answering cumbersome or difficult interrogatories. Of course, it is also often warranted. But when you use Rule 33(d), make sure to identify the correct documents, and make sure the identified documents fully support your position.

Continue Reading Interrogatory Responses Supplemented by Deposition Testimony

Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Montrose Wholesale Candies & Sundries, Inc., No. 03 C 5311 & 03 C 4844, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Jul. 27, 2007) (Cole, J.).
Judge Cole recommended granting plaintiff Lorillard Tobacco’s (“Lorillard”) petition for attorneys fees, but reduced the requested fees by about $80,000. Lorillard received a default judgment against defendants in 2006 and, as a result, brought this petition seeking its fees and costs. The Court’s opinion is an excellent guide for anyone preparing a fee petition. The Court refused to consider Lorillard’s costs because although Lorillard submitted a list of costs, it did not total the costs or discuss them in its petition and supporting declaration. Next, the Court accepted most of the costs for the four attorneys whose billing rates were explained in the supporting declaration, but denies any fees for the other nineteen people whose fees were not explained in the declaration. The Court notes that these nineteen people could be partners, associates or paralegals, but the Court cannot assess the reasonableness of their rates or billed activities without knowing their roles. And even for the four, the Court notes that it would have preferred some explanation of each attorney’s experience in past Lanham Act cases, in order to judge whether the attorneys’ billing rates were commensurate with their experience.
Finally, the court refused a subset of the fees for the four attorneys that were inadequately described, unnecessarily billed by multiple attorneys or clerical in nature. For example, the Court disallowed two eighteen minute bills for attorneys reviewing a one-sentence minute order changing the date of a status hearing.
Practice tip: Generate thorough bills and have someone with perspective on a case do a sanity check to make sure your client is not being billed for unreasonable work or duplicative efforts. Also, when preparing a fee petition, make sure to support the rates and fees billed by all attorneys and paralegals with detailed affidavits.

Continue Reading Fee Petitions Must be Detailed and Supported

Coilcraft, Inc. v. Inductor Warehouse, Inc., No. 98 C 0140, 2007 WL 2071991 (N.D. Ill. Jul. 18, 2007) (Cole, J.).
Judge Cole recommended that the Court grant plaintiff’s motion for contempt. The parties previously settled this trademark case and agreed to a consent judgment which required, among other things, that defendants include “prominent” disclaimers on any advertisements, including webpages, offering plaintiff’s products for sale from the secondary market. Plaintiff filed a motion for contempt arguing that defendant’s website did not include prominent disclaimers. The Court agreed, explaining that prominence could be achieved in several ways, but that “fine print” was not one of them:
Being a relational and contextual concept, “prominence” may be achieved in any number of ways: placement of words, type size, typeface, text color, etc. Prominence, however, is not achieved by the use of fine print disclaimers that are substantially smaller than any other print on a page.
Practice tip: When drafting settlement agreements, or other contracts, watch out for subjective words like “prominence.” If you expect that you may need to enforce the agreement* later, try to define subjective terms in more objective ways. For example, plaintiff in this case could have required that the disclaimer be at the top of each page in bolded font at least four points larger than the largest print on the page.
* If you expect that the agreement might be enforced against you, subjective terms may be beneficial.

Continue Reading Court Recommends Contempt Because Disclaimer Was Insufficient