Miles-LaGrange, Vicki, United States District Judge
The district court granted plaintiff’s motion for sanctions for emails that were not preserved via an adverse inference instruction, but denied plaintiff’s motion for sanctions for defendants' conduct of deleting files and wiping its employees' computer.
Plaintiff argued that the defendants had a duty to preserve
evidence in anticipation of and after the litigation began, and
identified three instances where defendants
intentionally destroyed relevant evidence in this matter, including lost emails between defendant and a third party, deleted computer files from one of defendants' employee’s hard
drive and wiped files from another employee’s computer. The
defendants argued that the plaintiff had not identified any relevant
evidence that had been lost nor did they identify any prejudice suffered by defendants’ actions. The court found that "it was not unreasonable for defendants to have taken steps
to ensure that any emails prior to switching over to its new email
service provider were saved." The court determined that defendants' email loss was prejudicial since it limited the amount of information available to plaintiff, and sanctioned defendants with an adverse inference instruction.
plaintiff was not prejudiced by defendants' actions of deleting and wiping files from its employees' hard drive and computer. Specifically, the court found that defendants admitted that the employee's personal files were deleted from the hard drive and, further, the hard drive was turned over to plaintiff and was the subject of an ongoing forensic analysis, during this litigation, to recover all of plaintiff's proprietary software from the hard drive. The court further found it was reasonable for the employee's personal files to be deleted before the hard drive was turned over to plaintiff and that there was no bad faith on the part of defendants in deleting the personal files.Accordingly, the court denied this part of plaintiff's motion for sanctions.
v.
SPECTRUM TRACER SERVICES, LLC, STEVE FAUROT, and KELLYBRYSON, Defendants
Counsel
Andrew M. Meerkins, Lynn H. Murray, Shook Hardy & Bacon, Chicago, IL, Bruce J. Cannon, Michael O. Sutton, Sutton McAughan Deaver PLLC, Matthew C. Broaddus, Tanya L. Chaney, Shook Hardy & Bacon, Houston, TX, Clyde R. Woody, Drew Neville, Jr., Michael L. Brooks, Hartzog Conger Cason & Neville, Oklahoma City, OK, for Plaintiff.Heath E. Hardcastle, James W. Rusher, Albright Rusher & Hardcastle, J. Christopher Davis, Johnson & Jones PC, John M. Hickey, Margaret M. Clarke, John T. Richer, Roger M. Gassett, Hall Estill, Jonathan D. Cartledge, The Davis Law Firm of Oklahoma, Paul D. Kingsolver, Johnson Jones, Tulsa, OK, for Defendants.
Kelly Bryson, Oklahoma City, OK, pro se.