Court Finds Party’s Discovery Performance “Clearly Egregious” but Undeserving of Harshest Sanctions, Orders Additional Discovery and Forensic Examination of Backup Systems to Verify Completeness of Production
Preferred Care Partners Holding Corp. v. Humana, Inc., 2009 WL 982460 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 9, 2009)
Following defendant’s discovery of thousands of relevant documents two months after the close of discovery and one month before trial, defendant ordered its employees to print the information and then to delete that information from their computers. Defendant argued the information was deleted in furtherance of its obligations under a Confidentiality Agreement requiring the destruction of the information discovered and that printing the information fulfilled its preservation obligations related to litigation. Finding that sanctions were warranted, the court ordered additional discovery into issues revealed by the newly discovered evidence at defendant’s expense and for defendant to allow plaintiffs to conduct a forensic examination of defendant’s backup system to verify its maintenance of deleted emails and to verify that all relevant emails were produced despite defendant’s directive to its employees to print and delete.