Key Insight: Slow responses to discovery; withholding information; Discovery fraud
Nature of Case: Personal Injury
Electronic Data Involved: Not specifically stated “documents”
Keywords: Attorney Fees; Bad Faith; Withholding information; Misconduct; Sanctions must be compensatory not punitive; Court’s inherent authority; But-For test
Key Insight: Arrest did not trigger a duty for defendants to preserve video of alleged beating before arrest
Nature of Case: Wrongful arrest
Electronic Data Involved: video, electronic photos
Keywords: triggering duty to preserve
Key Insight: Intentionally deleting ESI is different from failing to preserve and falls under a court’s inherent authority, not FRCP 37(e).
Nature of Case: Sexual harassment
Electronic Data Involved: Recorded conversation
Keywords: Spoliation sanctions, recording, DFS, department of financial services
Key Insight: Court said 37(e) doesn’t apply when recording was intentionally deleted. Adverse inference granted for plaintiff’s deletion of an audio tape, despite its subsequent recovery and production from a hard drive backup.
Nature of Case: sexual harassment at work
Electronic Data Involved: audio tape, hard drive backup
Keywords: adverse inference, over-preservation concerns
Key Insight: 37(e) takes precedence over inherent authority in cases where it can be applied. Spoliation took place before there was anticipation of a trial.
Nature of Case: Defamation, tortious interference with contracts
Electronic Data Involved: e-mails
Keywords: Spoliation, inherent authority, 37(e)
Key Insight: Sanctions under rule 37(e) must show actual prejudice, not merely theoretical.
Nature of Case: Wrongful death
Electronic Data Involved: Prison video
Keywords: Spoliation sanctions, actual prejudice, failure to preserve, adverse inference
Key Insight: The loss of surveillance video was unrelated to defendant’s liability, so spoliation determination was unnecessary
Nature of Case: 8th Amendment
Electronic Data Involved: video
Keywords: failure to preserve ESI,
Key Insight: ESI “willfully discarded or deleted”
Nature of Case: Alleged violations of the electronic Communications Privacy Act against defendants accused of stealing plaintiff’s clients and confidential information.
Electronic Data Involved: defendant’s iPhone, laptop and external hard drive
Keywords: adverse-inference instruction, forensic examination of a flash drive.
Key Insight: When ESI is recovered, it is not lost, and thus no spoliation. Further, there is no evidence that the delay was prejudicial.
Nature of Case: Workplace injury
Electronic Data Involved: an e-mail
Keywords: Spoliation sanctions, recovered ESI, prejudice
Key Insight: Security footage was overwritten before notice of lawsuit, so no spoliation; no intent to deprive found.
Nature of Case: Prisoner civil rights
Electronic Data Involved: Security video footage, audio recording, medical records
Keywords: video footage, deleted footage, spoliation sanctions
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