Key Insight: Court declined to impose spoliation sanctions absent evidence of bad faith
Nature of Case: Employment Discrimination
Electronic Data Involved: Investigation file, original medical records, “comments section” of medical records from computer system
Key Insight: Court found defendant?s arguments failed to establish undue burden and reasoned that defendant could not escape its discovery obligations ?because it has chosen to store those documents in a way that makes it difficult for Defendant to search for them,? that defendant?s estimations were based on ?a wider scope of documents than what Plaintiff is seeking,? and that defendant failed to provide sufficient detail to evaluate its argument
Electronic Data Involved: Employer issue laptop and contents
Key Insight: Where video surveillance tape was destroyed in contravention of duty to preserve, the court nonetheless denied plaintiff?s motion for sanctions (an adverse inference) where it determined that there was no prejudice to plaintiff because defendants identified the three officers/employees who processed plaintiff on the night of the allegedly wrongful arrest and because defendants conceded that the initial booking processes indicated that plaintiff was not the person sought by the relevant warrant
Nature of Case: Violation of civil rights (wrongful arrest) and related claims
Electronic Data Involved: Video surveillance
Key Insight: Where Toyota conducted inspection of relevant Event Data Recorder without providing plaintiffs the opportunity to be present but where there was no showing of actual alteration or deletion of relevant data, court declined to impose terminating sanctions and ordered a cautionary instruction be given to the jury; court also credited plaintiff?s evidence regarding a dispute surrounding the location of a plastic piece in plaintiffs? engine, which was allegedly moved by Toyota representatives during their inspection, and ordered an evidentiary instruction stating that the Toyota representatives testimony regarding the plastic piece should be regarded with ?greater caution? than that of other witnesses
Nature of Case: Personal injury/product liability
Electronic Data Involved: Event Data Recorder data and plastic piece in engine
Key Insight: Court found request for sanctions for defendant?s failure to retain records dating back to 1995 was not supported by the rules or the case law on the subject and stated that ?Corporations may maintain their records according to their business practices, so long as the record keeping does not afoul [sic] of the rules outlined by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Evidence and judicially created rules of the court.? Addressing plaintiff?s citation to an Eighth Circuit case ?that states that a negative inference can be given when the company?s policy for retention of documents is unreasonable or in bad faith,? (Remington Arms Co. , 836 FRD 1103 (8th Cir. 1988)) the court found that defendant?s policy was neither unreasonable nor in bad faith
Nature of Case: Claims arising from crash of golf cart perhaps related to faulty emergency brake
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
Key Insight: Magistrate Judge did not act contrary to law by ordering that, as a sanction for grossly negligent spoliation of audio tapes pursuant to Defendant?s retention policy, there would be a presumption of a factual dispute at the summary judgment state as to whether Plaintiff hung up on a customer and that if the case proceeded to trial, the court should instruct the jury with a ?spoliation charge? ?not an adverse inference?which would allow but not require the jury to presume that the lost evidence was relevant and favorable to the innocent party; District Court acknowledged that bad faith was necessary to impose an adverse inference, but found that this was not an adverse inference and was therefore within the court?s discretion
Nature of Case: wrongful termination
Electronic Data Involved: Audio tapes of relevant phone calls
Key Insight: Where defendant produced more than 61,000 pages of emails but, when faced with Plaintiff?s motion for spoliation sanctions, could not explain how the search for ESI had been conducted (by a vendor) and subsequently produced only 11,411 pages of emails after being ordered to re-run the search, the court imposed sanctions of reasonable attorneys? fees and costs incurred by Plaintiff?s counsel to review the initial large production of emails containing many non-responsive documents and found counsel for plaintiff was also entitled to recover ?some proportional and reasonable? attorneys? fees and costs for litigating the underlying motion for sanctions which brought the overproduction to light
Nature of Case: Allegations of assault pursuant to 42 USC 1983
Electronic Data Involved: Emails
Key Insight: Denying plaintiffs? motion for sanctions the court distinguished the cases of Lee v. Max Int., LLC, 638 F.3d 1318 (10th Cir. 2011) and Phillip M. Adams & Assoc., LLC v. Dell, Inc., 621 F. Supp. 2d 1173 (D. Utah 2009), found the defendant had not acted in bad faith, and rejected plaintiffs assertions that the duty to preserve arose from obligations to maintain information pursuant to corporate policy or an obligation to the government; noting that most relevant documents were from the 1990?s, the court also acknowledged that even where a preservation obligation exists, the passage of time can result in the inadvertent destruction or misplacement of evidence and the fading of human memories
Electronic Data Involved: Unspecified in opinion
Key Insight: Where court found no evidence that defendant had instituted any litigation hold or any evidence surrounding its collection efforts and where defendant failed to preserve potentially relevant hard drives despite the knowledge that the emails potentially contained thereon could not be retrieved from the company?s backup tapes, the court found that defendant had acted with gross negligence and imposed monetary sanctions but declined to impose more severe sanctions where there was no evidence of ?bad faith or egregious gross negligence? or that plaintiff had been prejudiced by the loss
Nature of Case: Breach of contract and various tort claims
Electronic Data Involved: ESI, hard drives
Key Insight: Upon Plaintiff?s motion for spoliation sanctions, court recognized two relevant trigger dates, the second of which expanded the initial scope of preservation, and found that Defendant was negligent in its failure to preserve relevant emails but declined to impose an adverse inference and instead ordered Defendant to bear the cost of restoring 33 backup tapes to determine if relevant information was contained thereon
Nature of Case: Sexual harassment
Electronic Data Involved: Emails
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