New Jersey District Judge Grants Spoliation Sanctions Citing Negligent Litigation Hold Procedures Failure to properly preserve electronic evidence continues to provide at-risk litigants with the ability to steer the court from scrutiny of the merits, and drastically shift the balance of litigation leverage. The latest example of this is NVE, Inc. v. Palmeroni out of [...]

E-Discovery Sanctions May Be Entered and Have Consequences Long After Litigation Concludes Even after a particular case has concluded, the risk of sanctions arising from e-discovery violations persists. Green v. Blitz U.S.A. was one of many products liability suits alleging injuries resulting from the defendant’s failure to equip its gas can with a “flame arrester.” [...]

Motion for Sanctions Denied Due to DuPont’s Reasonable, Professional Efforts to Implement and Update Litigation Hold Notices On April 27, 2011, the Court denied Defendant Kolon Industries, Inc.’s (“Kolon”) motion for sanctions against E.I. du Pont De Nemours and Company (“DuPont”) for alleged spoliation of four employees’ e-mail accounts and documents in litigation regarding trade [...]

The Litigator’s Guide to E-Discovery Sanctions: Who Pays the Piper When ESI “Disappears”? As interest in e-Discovery continues to grow, there’s no question what’s the driving force that grabs the headlines. Sanctions, of course.   It is the water cooler of the ESI world.  Sanctions capture clients’ interest, and motivates unwitting attorneys to pay attention to the [...]

Court Rejects Objection to Portion of Monetary Sanctions, Orders Payment of 1,440.12 by July 15 Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc., No. MJG-06-2662 (D. Md. June 15, 2011) In another chapter of the Victor Stanley saga, the defendant objected to payment of the remaining balance of the monetary sanction ordered as a result of [...]

For e-Discovery Efforts “Wholly Devoid of Competence” and for Spoliation, Court Orders Sanctions and Prohibits Indemnification from Insurer PIC Group, Inc. v. LandCoast Insulation, Inc., No. 1:09-CV-662-KS-MTP, 2011 WL 2669144 (S.D. Miss. July 7, 2011) A Special Master determined that defendant’s discovery failures were largely the result of a “callous and careless attitude” rather than [...]

DuPont v. Kolon: A Lesson In How To Avoid Sanctions For Spoliation Of Evidence Two recent decisions in the same case illustrate that, when it comes to imposing sanctions for spoliation of evidence, what matters is not simply whether you’ve intentionally deleted relevant evidence, but how you go about deleting it, and what the record [...]

Court Upholds Sanctions against “International Man of Mystery” citing Affirmative Actions to Destroy Relevant Documents in Unallocated Space Genger v. TR Investors, LLC, No. 592,2010, 2011 WL 2802832 (Del. July 18, 2011) As previously summarized on this blog (here), the Delaware Court of Chancery ordered sanctions against the defendant for wiping the unallocated space on [...]

Breaking News: 9 Million Verdict for DuPont in Trade Secret Theft and eDiscovery Sanctions Case A federal jury returned a stunning, $ 919 million verdict yesterday for DuPont in a trade secret theft case.  In E.I. du Pont de Nemours v. Kolon Industries, the verdict was the culmination of a two-and-a-half year battle that DuPont [...]

Timing is Still Everything: Motion for Spoliation Sanctions Denied as Untimely Am. Nat’l Prop. & Cas. Co. v. Campbell Ins., Inc., No. 3:08-cv-00604, 2011 WL 3021399 (M.D. Tenn. July 22, 2011) In this case, the court denied plaintiff’s Motion for Sanctions for Spoliation of Evidence as untimely, citing the facts that it had been 14 months since the alleged [...]