January 20, 2021 – Electronic Discovery Law

Holloway v. County of Orange (C.D. Cal. 2021)

Jan 20 2021

Key Insight: The court granted defendants’ motion for sanctions based on spoliation of evidence based on plaintiff’s deletion of his Facebook account. “Plaintiff had an obligation to preserve his Facebook account, he deleted the account with a culpable state of mind, and the account was relevant to Defendants’ claims.” The court further ordered that an adverse inference jury instruction was appropriate.

Nature of Case: Civil Rights

Electronic Data Involved: Social Media, Facebook

Case Summary

Cretacci v. Hare

Jan 20 2021

Key Insight: A party must explicitly request all possible remedies it seeks. Courts will not impose unrequested sanctions even if it determines lesser sanctions were warranted. Plaintiff only requested a default judgment sanction which requires that Defendants intentionally lost or destroyed data so it could not be used in litigation. Because there was no finding of intent, a default judgment sanction could not be issued. A lesser sanction of “measures no greater than necessary to cure the prejudice” could have been imposed because Plaintiff was prejudiced by the loss of ESI and there is no intent requirement. However, no sanctions were issued because such sanctions were not requested.

Nature of Case: Civil Rights

Electronic Data Involved: Video

Case Summary

Archive - January 20, 2021