Tag:Motion for Sanctions

Key Insight: Where defendant breached its duty to preserve evidence by taking ?no steps whatsoever to preserve emails or documents? following receipt of a cease and desist letter, court ordered adverse inference instruction that missing documents were unfavorable to defendants but declined to impose requested sanction of default judgment absent a showing of bad faith

Nature of Case: Copyright infringement, breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Key Insight: Although court concluded that plaintiff had not adequately proven damages under any theory and thus damage award was zero, court found that defendant’s “unabashed flaunting of this Court’s preservation order” in failing to preserve emails resulted in additional work by plaintiffs’ counsel and the court, and as sanction, court awarded attorneys’ fees and costs for all work done by counsel related to defendant’s failure to preserve email

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

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

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