Court Upholds Sanctions against “International Man of Mystery” citing Affirmative Actions to Destroy Relevant Documents in Unallocated Space
Genger v. TR Investors, LLC, No. 592,2010, 2011 WL 2802832 (Del. July 18, 2011)
As previously summarized on this blog (here), the Delaware Court of Chancery ordered sanctions against the defendant for wiping the unallocated space on his company’s computer system, despite a court order prohibiting such destruction. On appeal, the Delaware Supreme Court upheld the sanctions, citing the defendant’s intentional, affirmative actions to destroy documents, and clarified that it did not “read the Court of Chancery’s Spoliation Opinion to hold that as a matter of routine document retention procedures, a computer hard drive’s unallocated free space must always be preserved.”