E-Discovery Lesson For Slack Users

Philip Favro, writing on the Driven Inc. Blog, looked back on key cases from 2019 and the lessons they offer going forward. The first one he examines is Calendar Research LLC v. StubHub, Inc., a California case. Calendar filed a discovery motion seeking production of Slack messages from two of the individual defendants, after finding that defendants had produced “Slack email notifications, which alert users to pending messages, but not the messages themselves.” The court called the defendants “tardy” due to technical problems they experienced trying to export messages from Slack. The problems arose from the use of a free Slack account, which did not have e-discovery export capabilities, and because Slack would not give the defendants a complete export from the corporate account since it included data from other users who were not parties to the litigation. The lesson: “Counsel should determine whether the client is using Slack, develop an understanding of how the technology has been implemented, and take steps to preserve and then collect messages, files, and other relevant content for review and production.”