Catagory:Case Summaries

Key Insight: Where Defendant?s use of an internal utility tool on the at-issue server resulted in all of the data thereon being overwritten but where the District Court Judge found ?credible? Defendant?s explanations that he did not believe the hard drives contained relevant information and where the ?unique facts? of the case, namely the focus on Defendant?s TOR Node – which ?routed information for other end users around the world? but did not contain Defendant?s personal data – contributed to the court?s disagreement with the Magistrate Judge?s finding of intent, the court adopted the Magistrate Judge?s finding of spoliation but declined to impose default judgement and instead concluded that an adverse inference was appropriate

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

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Key Insight: In response to Plaintiff?s Motion for Spoliation Sanctions, the Court engaged in an analysis of four types of available sanctions: Evidentiary, Monetary, Dispositive and Adverse Inference Instructions. The Plaintiff argued the Defendant intentionally destroyed evidence in the form of an incident report, a surveillance video and correspondence between Defendant and a third-party claims adjuster. The Court found that information from the incident report and the lost emails with the claims adjuster were available elsewhere and that the loss of the video surveillance was due to a system-wide outage that affected several stores. The Court found no evidence that Defendant acted intentionally or recklessly and denied Plaintiff?s request for Dispositive Sanctions but instead imposed lesser Evidentiary Sanctions by allowing the Plaintiff to introduce evidence that the incident report was lost or destroyed, that the Defendant failed to preserve the third-party communications and that Defendant?s video system failed to record the incident.

Nature of Case: Slip and Fall

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, including video

Key Insight: In US litigation, court found no duty to preserve was triggered by Korean Fair Trade Commission?s investigation of price-fixing in Korean markets absent case law establishing such a possibility (i.e., that a foreign investigation of domestic markets could trigger a duty to preserve in the US because litigation could someday be commenced) or any related complaints or lawsuits filed in the US or evidence that the price fixing conspiracy was directed at the US or that the KFTC?s investigation extended to impacts in the United States

Nature of Case: Antitrust

Electronic Data Involved: ESI