Category: Attorney Fees

  • Massive Punitive Damages Award Rendered for Email Spoliation

    20 Sep 2016

    Intentional Email Deletion Leads to Multi-Million Dollar Sanctions Order A Delaware Court entered a massive punitive damages award based upon findings of intentional, bad faith spoliation of email threads by a corporate defendant in an antitrust case brought under the Sherman Act and common law.  The extensive facts in GN

  • Attorney Fees for Defendant’s Failure to Disclose Under FRCP 26(a)

    18 Jul 2016

    In XMission, L.C. v. Adknowledge, Inc., Case No. 15-277 (D. Utah, June 24, 2016), Plaintiff is an internet service provider that sued Defendant under the CAN-SPAM Act. At issue is over 100,000 emails. Before the completion of discovery, Plaintiff filed a Motion for Summary Judgment. In response, Defendant filed a

  • Email Communications: Top eDiscovery Cases of 2016 Regarding Spoliation and Formatting

    3 Jun 2016

    Email communications and threads continue to be among the leading categories of electronic data relevant to civil litigation. As such, there are numerous eDiscovery cases regarding disputes over email preservation, native file format, spoliation and more. So what has happened regarding email production as a part of electronic discovery so

  • Ninth Circuit Affirms Terminating Sanction for ESI Spoliation

    8 Apr 2016

    In an unpublished decision, Roadrunner Transportation Services, Inc. v. Tarwater, Case Nos. 15-55448 and 14-55529 (9th Cir., Mar. 18, 2016), the Ninth Circuit reviewed entry of default judgment based upon an order imposing a terminating sanction for spoliation.  In the underlying litigation, Plaintiff employer sued Defendant former employee for violations of

  • Spoliation Sanctions Against Plaintiff Limited to Attorney Fees

    16 Mar 2016

    In Best Payphones, Inc. v. City of New York, et. al., Consolidated Case Nos. 1-3924, 1-8506, 3-0192 (E.D. N.Y., Feb. 26. 2016), Plaintiff sued Defendants alleging violation of Plaintiff’s constitutional rights by instituting a regulatory framework requiring franchises and permits to operate payphones and by discriminating against and retaliating against

  • Attorney Fees Granted for Automatically Deleted Emails and ESI

    10 Feb 2016

    In Bown v. Reinke, et. al., Case No. 12-00262 (D. Idaho, January 8, 2016), Plaintiff was an inmate in a maximum security prison. He suffered a heart attack and alleged he was not properly treated, as he complained to guards of problems associated with heart attacks but the prison staff

  • Update on Forensic Examination of Hard Drives and Computers

    7 Jul 2015

    When Can a Party Obtain a Computer Forensic Examination? A year ago, ILS focused its monthly newsletter on the forensic examination of hard drives, computers, and mobile devices. Since then, the federal courts have issued several new decisions on the subject. Below is a summary of recent case law regarding

  • Two Attorney-Defendants Found to Have Intentionally Spoliated Electronic Data

    3 Jun 2015

    In the business litigation HMS Holdings Corp. v. Arendt, et al., 2015 NY Slip Op 50750(U) (Sup. Ct., Albany County, May 19, 2015), the New York Supreme Court in Albany County considered Plaintiffs’ accusations that two individual Defendants had spoliated electronic data. At the outset of the litigation, the parties had

  • Missing Audio Recording Results in Spoliation Sanctions

    25 May 2015

    Defendant accused Plaintiff of spoliating a recorded conversation between Plaintiff’s FRCP 30(b)(6) witness and Plaintiff’s former branch manager in Compass Bank v. Morris Cerullo World Evangelism, Civil No. 13-CV-0654-BAS(WVG)(S.D. Cal. May 8, 2015). Defendant had propounded discovery requests for plaintiff ESI that sought any audio recordings regarding the line of credit at dispute in

  • Bad Faith Spoliation Found Where Defendant Discarded Relevant Computer

    8 Apr 2015

    In Grady v. Brodersen, No. 13-cv-00752-REB-NYW (D.Colo. Mar. 23, 2015), a copyright infringement case filed in May 2013, the District Court of Colorado entered a scheduling order on February 20, 2014, ordering Defendant to preserve all electronically stored information (ESI), including metadata, and to identify his relevant devices. On February 27,