Tag:Motion for Sanctions

Key Insight: Court adopted magistrate judge?s recommendations and denied plaintiff?s motion for sanctions for intentional spoliation of website content, despite defendants’ failure to suspend its policy allowing content to be edited, where evidence showed that no edits were made to the content at issue and thus plaintiff suffered no prejudice

Nature of Case: Defamation

Electronic Data Involved: Website contents

Key Insight: Where defendants failed to timely place a litigation hold and where electronic evidence was subsequently destroyed by an automatic deletion system, court declined to impose sanctions upon plaintiff?s failure to show that the evidence destroyed was relevant to her claims

Nature of Case: Violations of Title VII and breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Key Insight: Stating ?Taishan did not even come close to making reasonable efforts to carry out its preservation of materials??, court ordered adverse inference and monetary sanctions (attorney?s fees and costs) for third-party defendant?s failure to preserve relevant evidence in violation of its litigation related duty to preserve and, in some instances, in violation of its own document retention policies

Nature of Case: Breach of contract (non-conforming goods)

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Key Insight: Where consulting firm retained by plaintiff destroyed soil samples and related electronic data absent implementation of a litigation hold and where plaintiff was obligated to preserve such evidence in light of the possibility of litigation and its knowledge of the evidence?s relevance to that litigation, court attributed the consulting firm?s destruction of the samples and data to plaintiff based upon ?the close ties? between them and imposed a sanction precluding the admission of evidence based on the destroyed evidence; court found that defendant?s failure to conduct its own testing upon notice of impending remediation to the relevant property did not constitute a disclaimer of defendant?s interest in plaintiff?s pre-remediation soil samples, especially where remediation destroyed defendant?s ability to verify plaintiff?s testing results or conduct additional tests and where defendant was not aware that the existing data in plaintiff?s possession would be destroyed

Nature of Case: Cost recovery action

Electronic Data Involved: Soil samples and related electronic data

Key Insight: Where defendant established plaintiff?s breach of its duty to preserve emails by failing to timely issue litigation hold notices to all ?key players? but failed to establish defendants? bad faith or the relevance of the lost messages, court declined to impose adverse inference sanctions but ordered monetary sanctions, including defendant?s attorneys fees associated with the motion

Nature of Case: Contract dispute

Electronic Data Involved: Emails, other ESI

Key Insight: Where audio tape of council meeting was lost despite duty to preserve and where defendants failed to rebut plaintiffs? allegation that the tape was erased or replaced beyond an unsupported assertion of inadvertence, court precluded defendants from relying on occurrences at the meeting and ordered an adverse inferences to the jury; where evidence indicated computers subject to preservation were defragged repeatedly, and perhaps erased intentionally, and where defendants failed to preserve 6 hard drives despite agreeing do so, court ordered jury to be informed of failure to preserve, that defendants were precluded from arguing that the absence of evidence supported their contentions, and that the jury would be given permission to draw an adverse inference

Nature of Case: Civil rights action

Electronic Data Involved: Audio tape, hard drives