Tag:Data Preservation

Key Insight: Denying defendant’s motion for terminating sanctions for plaintiff’s intentional destruction of digital tape recording device as dismissal would be disproportionate to prejudice to defendant caused by misconduct, court ruled that strong adverse inference was appropriate and, for purposes of resolving the parties’ cross motions for summary judgment, court would assume that the recording device would have revealed the plaintiff was intentionally recording conversations of co-workers without their consent

Nature of Case: Hostile work environment and retaliation claims

Electronic Data Involved: Digital recording device and tape

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff?s motion for sanctions based on correctional facility?s failure to preserve video surveillance footage of ?out-of-place? incident that preceded use of force incident, or digital versions of photographs taken of plaintiff?s injuries and cell after use of force incident, finding that plaintiff failed to establish a duty to preserve digital versions of photographs where hard copy photographs were preserved in accordance with the facility?s policy and procedure, and there was no evidence that defendants knew about the ?out-of-place? incident or recognized it as relevant to the use of force incident (the video footage of which was preserved); court further found that plaintiff failed to show that defendants deliberately lost or destroyed the evidence with a culpable state of mind

Nature of Case: Inmate sued correctional officers for use of excessive force

Electronic Data Involved: Video footage and digital information regarding plaintiff’s injuries and cell

Key Insight: Applying Third Circuit’s four-factor test for evaluating spoliation claims, court denied plaintiff’s motion for sanctions, finding that plaintiff failed to establish that defendant acted in bad faith by allowing the tapes to be automatically taped over as a matter of routine, since there was no evidence that defendant’s employees knew or anticipated that plaintiff’s claims would require the retention and production of emergency room lobby videotape footage from the night plaintiff was treated

Nature of Case: Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act claims

Electronic Data Involved: Security videotapes of emergency room lobby

Key Insight: Noting that parties have no duty to create documents simply to comply with another party’s discovery request, court denied plaintiff’s motion seeking spoliation sanctions based on defendant’s alleged failure to preserve copies of plaintiff’s credit reports, as defendant provided third parties with only unformatted electronic data which the third party would then aggregate and format according to its needs — it did not create any hard copy documents in connection with the process; as such, defendant could not be sanctioned for failing to preserve documents it neither created nor possessed

Nature of Case: Fair Credit Reporting Act case

Electronic Data Involved: Copies of credit reports defendant provided to third parties during pendency of lawsuit

Key Insight: Court granted motion for sanctions for Defendants? bad faith deletion of relevant records related to uploading infringing materials to its music distribution service despite a duty to preserve and found that Plaintiffs were entitled to judgment as a matter of law that certain defendants illegally uploaded infringing materials; for culpable spoliation of source code, including by failing to preserve relevant data stored on a backup server when the lease on that server expired, court found that defendants were precluded from raising one of their substantive defenses to plaintiff?s motion for summary judgment

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, source code