Wild v. Alster, 377 F.Supp.2d 186 (D.D.C. 2005).
In a medical malpractice lawsuit, the plaintiff moved for a new trial after the jury found in favor of the defendant. The plaintiff alleged the court erroneously denied a request for an expert examination of the defendant's computer. In particular, the plaintiff sought to discover if certain dates, relating to photographs of her face were taken, could be retrieved from the defendant's hard drive. The original photographs were lost during a computer system conversion; however, the defendant was able to recover some of the photos with the assistance of a data recovery service. The recovered photos only displayed the dates on which the photos were imported into the new system and not the dates on which they were originally taken. Despite this, the plaintiff asserted the defendant's computer consultant testified in a deposition that the original dates were retrievable. In reviewing the deposition testimony, the court determined the expert actually stated it would be impossible to print any of the photographs with dates indicating when they were originally taken. The court denied the motion for a new trial.