Magistrate Quashes Subpoenas to Plaintiff’s Personal Email Providers
The E-discovery Law Blog points to a case that demonstrates one thing: documents are not discoverable just because they are stored in an electronic format, but regardless of whether they are stored in an electronic format. In this case, the defendant subpoenaed all of the plaintiff's emails from her home email account (other than those between the plaintiff and her attorneys). The plaintiff filed a motion to quash, which the court granted on relevance grounds.
The defendant argued that because it appeared the plaintiff had failed to produce all of her personal emails that were responsive to written discovery, the defendant should be able to access all of the plaintiff's emails. Importantly, the court concluded that defendant's contention that the plaintiff had withheld responsive emails was not supported by the record. Therefore, the court did not address whether, on a proper showing that responsive emails have been withheld, a party might be entitled to discover all of an individual's personal emails regardless of whether responsive to specific requests or even relevant to the case.
Being able to search all of a person's personal email seems like an invasion of privacy. My advice is to never email anything that you wouldn't email with the whole world watching because that is how it could end up.