An interesting read from last week:
Sekisui
America Corp. was sanctioned for deleting the emails of the former president of
a merger target whom it is suing for breach of contract. One of the
disputes at issue is whether sanctions were warranted against the plaintiff
company for deleting a defendant’s email folder. The fact that the email folder
was destroyed was undisputed, but plaintiff claimed it was an innocent mistake
to free up space on the server. Defendants sought sanctions.
Here's the case:
In the Court’s order regarding an adverse inference instruction, Judge Scheindlin found as a matter of law that the destruction took place after the duty arose, but left as a question of fact for the jury to decide whether to presume the evidence was favorable to the Harts
