Tag:Data Preservation

Key Insight: Spoliation sanctions were not warranted for defendant’s failure to preserve copies of screenshots that may have been automatically stored in temporary cache files of defendant’s computers, since plaintiff’s counsel’s preservation letter said nothing about preserving temporary cache files, defendant had no reason to believe such files were relevant, files were deleted automatically and not through any affirmative action by defendant, defendant produced forensic images of its hard drives, and plaintiff established little if any prejudice from loss of cache files

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement and violations of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act

Electronic Data Involved: Copies of archived website screenshots automatically stored in temporary cache files of defendant’s computers

Key Insight: Declining to grant sanction of dismissal since there was insufficient evidence of intentional or bad faith conduct, or adverse inference instruction since it was unclear how relevant the missing email was, court awarded monetary sanctions since Spain?s failure to timely implement adequate litigation hold and failure to conduct timely and diligent search for electronic discovery was negligent and resulted in loss of email; court further directed Spain to complete its forensic search for email records and produce such records on rolling basis

Nature of Case: Litigation brought by the government of Spain arising from shipping casualty and oil spill

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Key Insight: Where plaintiff stored majority of its documents on third-party servers and failed to make payment to maintain the service, resulting in deletion of relevant documents, court declined to enter default judgment and monetary sanctions but instead would allow lesser sanction of adverse inference instruction, since (1) plaintiff had control, albeit indirectly, over destroyed information; (2) plaintiff was at least negligent in not taking any affirmative steps to preserve documents, and (3) evidence was relevant to defense

Nature of Case: Antitrust, tortious interference with contractual relations

Electronic Data Involved: Documents stored by plaintiff on third-party computer servers