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Sanctions
Sit-Up Ltd. v. IAC/Interactive Corp., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12017 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 20, 2008).
Plaintiff requested an adverse inference sanction against Defendants after one Defendant failed to maintain its employees' email, however, this request was denied as the court found no evidence of negligence or bad faith.
Tse v. UBS Financial Services, Inc., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11915 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 19, 2008).
Plaintiff failed to provide contact information for a witness and also could not recall the location of her laptop for 2 years, resulting in the court ordering Plaintiff to pay half of Defendant's costs and attorney fees.
Diabetes Centers of America, Inc. v. Healthpia America, Inc., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8362 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 5, 2008).
The court denied cross motions for spoliation and discovery abuse sanctions as bad faith by either party could not be shown and discovery responses by both parties had been incomplete.
Qualcomm Inc. v. Broadcom Corp., "Qualcomm II", 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 911 (S.D. Cal. Jan. 7, 2008).
The court ordered Plaintiff to pay Defendant approximately $8.5 million in attorney fees and costs after they withheld tens of thousands of email messages. Additionally, Plaintiff's attorneys were ordered to report to the state bar.
Columbia Pictures, Inc. v. Bunnell, "Columbia Pictures II", 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 96360 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 13, 2007).
The court made a default judgment against Defendant, as the court found that they had purposely destroyed, altered, and withheld evidence and provided false testimony to hide evidence of the destruction.
Fleming v. City of New York, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90114 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 7, 2007).
The court ordered sanctions against Defendant after they failed to turn over data sets. These sanctions included the exclusion of expert witness findings for Defendant and an order for Defendant to pay Plaintiff's expert witness expenses and attorney fees.
PML North America, LLC v. ACG Enterprises of NC, "PML IV", 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87602 (E.D. Mich. Nov. 29, 2007).
Sanctions were ordered to be paid individually by the president of the company after the company became insolvent, as it was found that the company was the instrument of its president's litigation misconduct.
Ecor Solutions, Inc. v. State of New York, 2007 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 7840 (N.Y. Ct. Cl. Oct. 31, 2007).
An adverse inference sanction was not applied to Defendant, although Defendant had failed to place a litigation hold on document destruction. Plaintiff could not show that deleted documents were relevant or purposefully deleted by Defendant.
Benton v. Dlorah, Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80503 (D. Kan. Oct. 30, 2007).
Plaintiff was sanctioned $1,000 for deleting relevant email data from her home computer and she was also ordered to allow a forensic examination of this computer to occur so that the deleted email could be recovered.
Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. v. Mesa Air Group, Inc. (In re Hawaiian Airlines, Inc., Debtor), 2007 Bankr. LEXIS 3679 (Bankr. D. Haw. Oct. 30, 2007).
The airline's Executive Vice President and CFO used a wiping program on his company computers after being informed of a litigation hold. As the company had not made copies of the hard drives to preserve relevant data prior to these computer systems being wiped, the court issued adverse inference sanctions against them.
Lockheed Martin Corp. v. L-3 Communications Corp., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79572 (M.D. Fla. Oct. 25, 2007).
Sanctions against Plaintiff were not ordered, although an employee of Plaintiff revealed that he had deleted email. Defendant could not show that the deleted email was relevant or crucial to their claims.
APC Filtration, Inc. v. Becker, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76221 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 12, 2007).
Defendant threw away his personal computer system in a dumpster on a construction site after receiving notice that a theft of trade secrets complaint had been made against him. The court issued sanctions, including deeming key allegations in Plaintiff's complaint conclusively proven, after finding that Defendant had acted in bad faith.
Heartland Surgical Specialty Hosp., LLC v. Midwest Division, Inc., "Heartland IV", 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80208 (D. Kan. Oct. 1, 2007).
A party failed to disclose relevant information located in an email chain until the day before they moved for summary judgment. Although the party had not disclosed the information in its rule 26(a)(1)(A) initial disclosure or in discovery responses, the court did not issue sanctions as time still remained for the opposing party to respond to the new information and trial was not imminent.
In re Seroquel Products Liability Litigation, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61287 (M.D. Fla. Aug. 21, 2007).
The court found that the drug company's failure to produce databases or electronic discovery from 80 custodians was sanctionable, however, did not rule on the appropriate sanctions until Plaintiffs were able to produce evidence of prejudice and additional expenses caused by the conduct.
Perez-Farias v. Global Horizons, Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 58576 (E.D. Wash. Aug. 10, 2007).
The court ordered sanctions against Defendants due to their failure to comply with discovery orders, however, Defendant did not pay these lesser sanctions, resulting in the court imposing a dispositive sanction of default judgment as to liability of Defendants.
Emmerick v. Penley/Groseclose, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 59147 (E.D. Tenn. Aug. 6, 2007).
Plaintiff moved for the court to order Defendant to produce email messages and data, however, the court denied this motion as Plaintiff could not show that he had made a good faith effort with Defendant to resolve the discovery dispute without court intervention.
PML North America, LLC v. ACG Enterprises of NC, Inc., "PML III", 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54003 (E.D. Mich. Jul. 26, 2007).
The CEO of the company was added as a Defendant to assume personal liability for a default judgment and attorney fees awarded as a sanction for electronic discovery abuses by his company.
Hunts Point Realty Corp. v. Pacifico, 2007 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 5700 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Jul. 24, 2007).
As Defendant failed to preserve email, Plaintiffs were awarded their attorney fees and costs.
Healthcare Advocates, Inc. v. Harding, Earley, Folmer & Frailey, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52544 (E.D. Pa. Jul. 20, 2007).
The court found that Defendant did not engage in spoliation of evidence, although it failed to preserve copies in its computer's temporary cache files of archived website images.
Doe v. Norwalk Community College, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 51084 (D. Conn. Jul. 16, 2007).
After Defendant was informed that a sexual assault claim might be filed, they failed to halt the destruction of relevant electronic information. The court found that Defendant was not entitled to the Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(f) good faith exception to sanctions for routine destruction of data and held that Plaintiff was entitled to an adverse inference sanction regarding such data.
Tri-County Motors, Inc. v. American Suzuki Motor Corp., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48418 (E.D.N.Y. Jul. 3, 2007).
Plaintiff's speculated that specific email messages that contained evidence supporting Plaintiff's claim was missing from Defendant's records, however this did not result in a sanction of spoliation against Defendant.
Google Inc. v. American Blind & Wallpaper Factory, Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48309 (N.D. Cal. June 27, 2007).
The court imposed sanctions on Defendant in the form of a conditional adverse inference and $15,000 payable to Plaintiff due to Defendant's failure to adequately search its email messages in response to discovery requests.
In re Spoonemore, 2007 Bankr. LEXIS 2215 (Bankr. D. Kan. June 25, 2007).
The creditor in this bankruptcy case was sanctioned $1,000 after stating that ten email messages were privileged, however, after an in camera review of these documents, the court found that they were not privileged.
Klein-Becker United States, LLC v. Englert, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45197 (D. Utah June 20, 2007).
Defendant did not comply with the required expedited discovery, resulting in Plaintiff being awarded attorney fess and expenses.
Wachtel v. Health Net, Inc., "Wachtel III", 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 44225 (D.N.J. June 19, 2007).
Defendants were ordered to pay $6.72 million in attorney fees and Plaintiff's costs in obtaining discovery as a result of their "repeated and unabated discovery abuses and lack of candor".
In re September 11th Liability Insurance Coverage Cases, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43734 (S.D.N.Y. June 18, 2007).
Sanctions of $1.25 million were imposed after a relevant insurance policy was deleted in its electronic format and a hard copy of the document was not disclosed for nearly two years.
Coral Group, Inc. v. Shell Oil Co., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43220 (W.D. Mo. June 14, 2007).
Plaintiff's complaint was dismissed with prejudice due to their disregard of discovery rules and court orders.
Synergy Tech & Design, Inc. v. Terry, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34463 (N.D. Cal. May 2, 2007).
Defendants were assessed sanctions of $4,275 to reimburse Plaintiff's costs of obtaining court-ordered discovery after they produced email without attachments.
AJW Partners, LLC v. Peak Entertainment Holdings, Inc., 2007 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2702 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Apr. 24, 2007).
The court determined that an email confirmation of delivery was sufficient notice that a registered package had been delivered and did not impose an adverse inference instruction based on the party's failure to produce a hard copy signature card.
Greyhound Lines, Inc. v. Wade, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 9282 (8th Cir. Apr. 24, 2007).
Plaintiff sent an electronic control module that had been located inside a bus that suffered an accident to the manufacturer, where it was erased. However, the court did not find that Plaintiff had done so in an attempt to suppress the truth.
Great Am. Ins. Cos. v. Subranni (In re Tri-State Armored Services, Inc.), 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29794 (D.N.J. Apr. 23, 2007).
Defendant asked for sanctions against Plaintiff due to their failure to produce email from computers that had been discarded, however, the court affirmed the bankruptcy court's ruling denying this claim as Plaintiff could not show that they were harmed by this.
Bonneville v. Kitsap County, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25983 (W.D. Wash. Apr. 5, 2007).
The court dismissed Plaintiff's action with prejudice as Plaintiff failed to respond to several discovery orders and Defendant's motion to dismiss.
Doe v. Winter, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25517 (M.D. Pa. Apr. 5, 2007).
Plaintiff moved for sanctions against Defendant because Defendant did not issue a litigation hold, however, this was denied as Defendant eventually produced all responsive email from backup tapes.
Teague v. Target Corp., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25368 (W.D.N.C. Apr. 4, 2007).
Plaintiff discarded her computer system that contained information pertaining to her case approximately one year after she retained counsel, which resulted in an adverse jury instruction.
University of Pittsburgh v. Townsend, "University of Pittsburgh II", 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24620 (E.D. Tenn. Mar. 30, 2007).
Plaintiff's counsel destroyed email between counsel and its experts and advised experts to destroy their copies of the email and drafts of their reports. The court denied Defendant's motion to exclude the expert's testimony because Plaintiff's usual practice of advising experts to destroy drafts was not a product of fraudulent intent.
PML North America, LLC v. ACG Enterprises of NC, Inc., "PML II", 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22394 (E.D. Mich. Mar. 28, 2007).
Plaintiff obtained a default judgment against Defendant due to their spoliation of data and was awarded $134,373 in attorney fees and expert witness costs.
Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc. v. Coleman (Parent) Holdings Inc., No. CA4D05-2606, Fla. Ct. App., 4th Dist. (March 21, 2007).
The District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida reversed a $1.58 billion jury verdict, as they found that Coleman (Parent) Holdings could not prove actual compensatory damages and, as a result, the appellate court also found that the punitive damages award could not stand in the absence of compensatory damages.
Claredi Corp. v. SeeBeyond Technology Corp., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16593 (E.D. Mo. Mar. 8, 2007).
Defendant's failure to produce responsive documents resulted in the court ordering Defendant to reimburse Plaintiff in the amount of $53,943.75 and to also pay $20,000 to the clerk of the court.
Netria Corp. v. Graham (In re Graham), 2007 Bankr. LEXIS 785 (D.N.H. Mar. 8, 2007).
Although Defendant filed bankruptcy, the previously ordered sanction for spoliation was not discharged.
Kinney v. Trustees of Princeton University, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14452 (D.N.J. Feb. 28, 2007).
Defendant failed to produce responsive files until immediately before trial was set to begin, resulting in the Plaintiff being prejudiced. Instead of striking the defendant's affirmative defenses, the court ordered that the deposition of the employee in question be re-opened at the cost of Defendant.
School-Link Technologies, Inc. v. Applied Resources, Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14723 (D. Kan. Feb. 28, 2007).
Although a party failed to initiate a litigation hold, sanctions for spoliation could not be supported until it was shown that responsive documents had been destroyed as a result.
 View Additional Case Summaries Regarding Sanctions
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