Key Insight: delayed legal hold and missing metadata caused prejudice; sanctions imposed such that plaintiffs may not use the date in a document to prove document creation date and defendant may offer archived websites from the internet into evidence
Nature of Case: defamation, libel
Electronic Data Involved: websites, emails, metadata
Keywords: metadata, legal hold, spoliation of websites
Key Insight: Lack of prejudice or evidence of intent to deprive. Denied motion for dispositive sanctions under Rule 37(e). No evidence that higher quality recordings actually existed and were not preserved.
Nature of Case: Excessive force used during security screening
Electronic Data Involved: closed circuit video recordings
Keywords: preserve video recording, excessive force at the security screening.
Key Insight: Lost ESI claim failed because there was no proof anything was lost and there was no clear duty to preserve.
Nature of Case: Misappropriation of trade secrets
Electronic Data Involved: archived email, facebook posts
Keywords: spoliation, lost ESI, duty to preserve
Key Insight: Where Defendant?s use of an internal utility tool on the at-issue server resulted in all of the data thereon being overwritten but where the District Court Judge found ?credible? Defendant?s explanations that he did not believe the hard drives contained relevant information and where the ?unique facts? of the case, namely the focus on Defendant?s TOR Node – which ?routed information for other end users around the world? but did not contain Defendant?s personal data – contributed to the court?s disagreement with the Magistrate Judge?s finding of intent, the court adopted the Magistrate Judge?s finding of spoliation but declined to impose default judgement and instead concluded that an adverse inference was appropriate
Nature of Case: Copyright infringement
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
Key Insight: Spoliation sanctions for failing to preserve the webpages in which the images were published.
Nature of Case: Intellectual Property infringement
Electronic Data Involved: Images, Webpages
Key Insight: Court denied motion for spoliation sanctions where Defendants ?failed to clear the threshold issue of showing that relevant evidence was lost or destroyed? or, in the case of the alleged spoliation of ESI of one former employee, where defendants failed to show that the emails could not be replaced through additional discovery in light of the production of some of the employee?s emails from other computers
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
Key Insight: For a defendant?s spoliation and failure to participate in litigation, the court struck the defendant?s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and eventually also awarded default judgment and attorneys fees to the plaintiff; addressing whether to also sanction Defendant?s counsel for failing to prevent the spoliation, the court reasoned that ?it seems obvious that the party requesting sanctions has at least an initial burden of proof with respect to not only whether sanctionable conduct has occurred, but also with respect to whether the misbehaving party?s attorney may have been involved? and found Plaintiff?s assertions and evidence of such involvement ?too thin?
Electronic Data Involved: ESI
Key Insight: Court found Plaintiff failed to take reasonable steps to preserve ESI when she turned her phone in to Verizon on August 15, 2016. Defendants claimed text messages on the Plaintiff?s phone could have shown she was acting as a manager and was hence an exempt employee. Defendants discussed their position with Plaintiff?s counsel in June, 2016 and the phone was de-activated two months later. Plaintiff testified she did not know she had to keep the phone to preserve the ESI. The Court found this testimony credible and recommended, pursuant to Rule 37(e)(1) that the ??[C]ourt order measures no greater than necessary to cure the prejudice? and proposed an instruction to the jury that Plaintiff had a duty to maintain potential ESI contained on her phone, but failed to do so and indicated the court could also instruct the jury as to any inference to draw from Plaintiff?s failure to preserve texts on her phone.
Nature of Case: Employment litigation, unpaid overtime
Electronic Data Involved: Text messages
Key Insight: For an individual defendant?s admitted disposal of his laptop and deletion of the contents of his external drive after transferring the contents to a thumb drive despite Plaintiff?s request to preserve and pending litigation, the court reasoned that Plaintiff ?plausibly suggests? that the laptop and hard drive ?might have? contained relevant ESI based on Defendant?s admitted accessing and copying of confidential files and imposed sanctions, including an adverse inference and an order for Defendants to permit and pay for examination of the at-issue external drive, but the court declined to impose sanctions for the individual defendant?s loss of his cellphone ?based on the current state of the evidentiary record? where Plaintiff failed to proffer evidence sufficient to suggest that the loss was not inadvertent or to clarify the approximate time of the loss
Electronic Data Involved: Laptop, ESI, cellular phone
Key Insight: Applying the common law, the court imposed a permissive adverse inference and monetary sanctions for Plaintiff?s spoliation of his cellular phone and its contents where Plaintiff claimed a day before he was scheduled to produce it that he had lost his phone months ago but provided no details regarding the loss or his attempts at preservation or recovery of the phone and where the court concluded that Plaintiff made a ?deliberate choice to withhold [the phone] from production? and that Defendants were prejudiced as a result
Nature of Case: Insurance coverage litigation
Electronic Data Involved: Cellular phone and contents
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