Shawback v. Wells Fargo Bank N.A., No. 3:11-cv-00243 JWS, 2013 WL 3306078 (D. Alaska July 1, 2013)

Key Insight: Where Defendant sought spoliation sanctions for Plaintiff?s failure to preserve communications and other evidence related to her job search (related to her mitigation of damages) and where Plaintiff?s counsel explained that many of the job-seeking activities were undertaken electronically and did not result in emails to be preserved, the court reasoned that Plaintiff?s degree of fault with respect to the online services was ?not large,? that allowing her to testify that she ?periodically? reviewed job lists and ?sometimes? clicked on the links was not ?seriously prejudicial,? and that the sanctions sought were disproportional and thus ordered that Plaintiff could not testify regarding specific job inquiries absent documentation of that inquiry and that she could not testify that she applied for one-hundred or more jobs, but indicated that Plaintiff would be allowed to testify that she looked at jobs periodically and sometimes clicked on the links and to testify regarding job applications for which she provided documentation

Nature of Case: Employment discrimination

Electronic Data Involved: Data related to online job searching