Court Enforces Agreement to Delete Defendants’ Confidential Materials Despite Cost
Oxxford Info. Tech., Ltd. v. Novantas, LLC, 910 N.Y.S.2d 77 (N.Y. App. Div. 2010)
In this case, the parties stipulated to a Confidentiality Order requiring that business information exchanged during the course of discovery would be returned or destroyed at the end of litigation. Relying on the agreement, defendants provided access to “their core business secrets.” When the case settled, plaintiff’s counsel discovered that defendants’ information had been backed up to “numerous back-up tapes” on their law firm’s computer system. Plaintiff then sought to modify the confidentiality agreement to allow the firm to retain the information “subject to proposed safeguards designed to protect the confidentiality of the information” in light of the cost of deleting the information from the tapes. The motion was denied and plaintiff appealed.