Key Insight: After granting summary judgment in favor of all defendants, court retained ancillary jurisdiction to adjudicate plaintiff?s motion for spoliation sanctions; court conducted seven-day evidentiary hearing on the motion, ultimately rejecting plaintiff’s various claims of spoliation
Nature of Case: Pennsylvania Whistleblower Act claims
Electronic Data Involved: Email, computer hard drives
Key Insight: Although court found that U.S. Bank was grossly negligent in failing to institute a litigation hold until eight months after its duty to preserve arose, court denied spoliation sanctions as there was no evidence of bad faith but positive evidence of good faith, and U.S. Bank presented persuasive evidence that no relevant documents were destroyed; court further ruled that litigation hold that U.S. Bank finally did impose was reasonable, as custodians were guided by both business people and counsel as to what to retain and counsel monitored compliance, gathering and reviewing relevant emails in the legal hold folders, substantive emails and attachments were printed out and retained separately and not subject to autodeletion policy
Nature of Case: Breach of contract, declaratory judgment
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
Key Insight: Sanction precluding plaintiff from presenting evidence or testimony in opposition to defendant?s defenses and counterclaims affirmed where plaintiff failed for two years to reveal that relevant ESI had been lost after it was allegedly printed; claimed that the relevant computer was ?broken? and had been discarded when defendant sought a forensic examination; and failed to issue a litigation hold; appellate court rejected contention that the disposal did not prejudice defendant because the files had been printed where that claim was contradicted at deposition and where hard copy did not contain metadata
Electronic Data Involved: ESI, hard drive/computer
Key Insight: For egregious spoliation, including intentional deletions by key custodians, plaintiff?s failure to investigate storage practices or to ensure preservation, several custodians? failure to suspend auto-delete functions associated with their files, failure to suspend destruction of backup tapes, and replacement of relevant servers, the court ordered dismissal of plaintiff?s claims
Nature of Case: Legal malpractice
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
Key Insight: Where defendant converted relevant audio files to .wav format and destroyed the originals pursuant to its document retention policy, the court declined to enter spoliation sanctions because the record did not establish bad faith reasoning (1) that defendant had provided an adequate explanation for plaintiff?s concern about gaps in the recordings, (2) that plaintiff should have requested the files in native format (which she did not) and that had she done so, defendant would have been on notice to preserve relevant files in their original format, and (3) the files were discarded pursuant to an established document retention policy; regarding bad faith, court stated, ?Only the bad faith loss or destruction of evidence will support either a judgment in favor of Plaintiff or the kind of adverse inference that Plaintiff seeks, i.e., that production of the original i360 recordings would have been unfavorable to Defendant?
Nature of Case: Employment discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Audio files converted from original format
Key Insight: ?[B]ecause appellant failed to show that the video contained materially exculpatory evidence or that the state acted in bad faith by failing to preserve the evidence, appellant did not demonstrate that his due process rights were violated. Thus, the trial court did not err by overruling his motion to dismiss.?
Nature of Case: Criminal: assault
Electronic Data Involved: Video surveillance footage
Key Insight: Circuit court found that the district court erred in imposing an adverse inference for failure to preserve absent evidence of bad faith and thus reversed the district court?s imposition of an adverse inference sanction
Nature of Case: Patent Infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Source Code
Key Insight: Court denied motion for spoliation sanctions where it was unclear that any spoliation had even occurred in light of defendants? backup system, where the court concluded that defendants had not acted in bad faith (but had instead ?expended great effort to insure that plaintiffs receive information from both their live and archived email system ??), and where the degree of prejudice was minimal (assuming spoliation occurred) in light of the significant other discovery that was produced
Electronic Data Involved: Email
Key Insight: Court denied defendant?s motion for sanctions resulting from plaintiff?s alleged spoliation of a number of USB devices allegedly attached to plaintiff?s work laptop where defendant failed to establish: 1) that plaintiff was responsible for attaching the devices, 2) that plaintiff removed or copied any proprietary information, or 3) that plaintiff then destroyed the devices while under a duty to preserve them
Nature of Case: Breach of employment contract
Electronic Data Involved: USB devices
Key Insight: Finding defendants? search efforts inadequate, court ordered discovery re-opened and that defendant conduct specific additional discovery, including additional searches on specific repositories, and provide specific information regarding how its search efforts were conducted and by whom; the court also provided a good discussion of preservation obligations, but ultimately concluded that additional information was necessary to make a determination regarding the reasonableness of defendants efforts; ultimately, court declined to impose drastic sanctions, but ordered additional discovery and that defendants pay monetary sanctions (attorneys? fees and cost)
Nature of Case: Patent infringement
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
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