Tag:Spoliation

Key Insight: Court denied motion for spoliation sanctions where plaintiff failed to establish the existence of the allegedly spoliated emails and where, if the emails had existed, they would have been automatically deleted prior to the trigger of defendant?s duty to preserve and thus would not have been lost in bad faith; court?s analysis included discussion of trigger of duty to preserve and reasoned that meetings between accused professor and his department head and/or program director regarding alleged unwanted interactions with student did not trigger university?s duty to preserve because there was no evidence to suggest that either the department head or program director should have reasonably anticipated litigation at that time (citing Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212 for proposition that ?Merely because one or two employees contemplate the possibility that a fellow employee might sue does not generally impose a firm wide duty to-preserve.?)

Nature of Case: Wrongful termination

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Key Insight: Where medical facility destroyed medication records in accordance with its records-retention policy, despite a pending claim, but where the destruction was in not bad faith or an attempt to shield plaintiff from the truth and where there was no showing of prejudice, District Court did not abuse its discretion in denying plaintiff?s request for sanctions

Nature of Case: Medical Malpractice

Electronic Data Involved: Medication Records

Key Insight: Plaintiff argued that Department of Justice had destroyed records in violation of Federal Records Act but court clarified that Federal Records Act rather requires agencies to decide which materials must be preserved and reasoned that where DOJ decided not to require preservation of notes related to employment candidates and thus such information was destroyed, no spoliation could be found where the destruction was in accordance with policy and occurred prior to initiation of the relevant investigation and the subsequent lawsuit

Nature of Case: Claims alleging wrongful employment decisions based on political affiliation

Electronic Data Involved: Notes taken regarding applicants

Key Insight: Court ordered adverse inference and monetary sanctions (in an amount to be established) where plaintiff was grossly negligent in its preservation, review and collection of documents, including by failing to issue a litigation hold and because of counsel?s failure to supervise the review and collection of documents, and where such failures resulted in the loss of relevant evidence; court denied request for preclusion of evidence where defendant failed to establish that plaintiff acted in bad faith; Motion for Reconsideration denied by District Judge 2012 WL 2020242 (D.N.J. June 5, 2012)

Key Insight: Court declined to impose sanctions for plaintiff?s failure to disable software set to automatically erase and write-over internet-related files whenever the browser closed where plaintiff asserted that he installed such software as a regular practice on all of his computers and where because of the automatic nature of the software, evidence was lost well before plaintiff filed his suit or defendant filed its countersuit; defendant would be allowed to present additional evidence of spoliation at trial and the court indicated its willingness to reconsider sanctions upon a showing that more than just internet-related files were deleted

Nature of Case: Breach of contract related to compensation

Electronic Data Involved: Laptop

Key Insight: Court denied motion for sanctions for alleged spoliation of one email where plaintiff failed to establish that the ?destruction of the email was anything but inadvertent or that any other email was deleted? or that the email constituted relevant evidence favorable to the defendants; court?s opinion indicated that defendants? use of oral instruction to preserve evidence was acceptable; court denied motion for sanctions related to defendants? failure to preserve and produce all runtime environments for allegedly infringing software program where defendants took efforts to preserve similar evidence with the belief that such preservation was sufficient and thus did not have a sufficiently capable state of mind to establish spoliation and where plaintiff failed to establish the relevance of the allegedly spoliated evidence to its claims

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email, computer files related to development of allegedly infringing software

Key Insight: Despite acknowledging defendant?s failure to implement a litigation hold until at least 5 years after it first anticipated litigation, the court denied plaintiff?s motion for sanctions where the quantity and quality of the documents produced by defendant established that relevant information was ?diligently preserved? pursuant to defendant?s document retention policy and where plaintiff failed to establish that it had been prejudiced or that its ability to effectively prepare for trial had been impeded

Nature of Case: Hatch-Waxman patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, emails