California Electronic Discovery Act

The California Electronic Discovery Act became effective on June 29, 2009. This important new legislation is California's first attempt to deal specifically and comprehensively with the issues presented by the discovery of e-mails, word processing document files, digital images, internet access records, and numerous other types of "electronically stored evidence" (ESI) in California state court litigation. It substantially re-vamps the California treatment of the discovery of ESI, often referred to as "e-discovery." Due to the importance of this topic, every California attorney needs to be aware of electronic discovery issues and how they will be handled in California. E-discovery is a rapidly expanding area and those California attorneys who have not yet encountered e-discovery issues in the course of their practices may reasonably expect to do so in the foreseeable future. At present, E-discovery is probably the hottest single issue in litigation