Key Insight: Spoliation; duty to preserve
Nature of Case: Civil Rights Title VII – Sexual harassment
Electronic Data Involved: Notebook; earnings records
Keywords: Loss of documents; Spoliation; duty to preserve; Bad Faith; Prejudice
Key Insight: Intentional deletion of accounts does not lead to prejudice if the data is still accessible, but does lead to an adverse inference when the data is not
Nature of Case: Copyright infringement
Electronic Data Involved: “sock puppet” accounts and related data
Keywords: Sock puppet accounts, adverse inference, spoliation sanctions
Key Insight: A ruling of prejudice requires specificity as to documents. Intent is required for 37(3) sanctions, but courts can reserve the right to impose a lesser sanction after seeing hope evidence is presented at trial.
Nature of Case: Employment dispute
Electronic Data Involved: e-mails
Keywords: Spoliation sanctions, prejudice, specificity
Key Insight: Spoliation sanctions must remedy the harm caused by the loss, and if documents are produced there is little loss
Nature of Case: Intellectual Property (Trade secrets)
Electronic Data Involved: E-mail
Keywords: Spoliation, sanctions
Key Insight: A party’s late disclosure of evidence (while using it as the basis of their own expert opinion) justifies exclusion of that evidence
Nature of Case: Certified class action
Electronic Data Involved: audiovisual recordings, data logs
Keywords: late disclosure, exclusion sanctions, expert discovery cutoff, fact discovery, untimeliness
Key Insight: Plaintiff performed “factory reset” on phone, deleting videos; Plaintiff had sent to EEOC, but could not produce e-mail; Was not enough for sanction of dismissal
Nature of Case: Employment Discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Cell Phone Video
Keywords: Negligent Spoilation; Perjury; Sanctions
Key Insight: Terminating sanctions for alleged email spoliation is premature without compelling the documents 1st
Nature of Case: copyright infringement
Electronic Data Involved: deleted emails
Keywords: software copyright, accelerated email retention policy, terminating sanctions
Key Insight: relevance of search terms, proportionality
Nature of Case: breach of contract, trade secrets
Keywords: sanctions, motion to compel, search terms, third-party subpoenas, personal capacity, proportionality, attorney’s fees, current version, pending motion for protective order
Key Insight: Court used Flury test, not FRCP 37(e), found that lack of data was not the only source of the data and that plaintiff would not be prejudiced
Nature of Case: Personal injury
Electronic Data Involved: Computer records
Keywords: FedEx, Omnitracs, Flury
Key Insight: Plaintiff failed to show that he was prejudiced by the failure to preserve surveillance footage
Nature of Case: 1983 Civil rights
Electronic Data Involved: surveillance footage
Keywords: failure to preserve, prejudice, spoliation sanctions
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