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You are viewing ARCHIVED CONTENT released online between 1 April 2010 and 24 August 2018 or content that has been selectively archived and is no longer active. Content in this archive is NOT UPDATED, and links may not function.Extract from article by Doug Austin published in the eDiscovery Daily
In Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC v. Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, No. 654586/2012 (Supreme Court of New York, New York County, December 7, 2015), the Court, determining that the defendant had spoliated data, found that the plaintiff had not demonstrated sufficient facts to warrant striking the defendant’s affirmative defenses, but opted to order an adverse inference instruction and also ordered the defendant to pay the plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees and costs in preparing the instant motion for sanctions.
Case Background
In this action to recover principal distributions from the defendant, the defendant, at the direction of in-house counsel, distributed a written litigation hold notice to certain employees who were deemed likely to possess documents relevant to the dispute. In addition, the defendant’s IT department saved emails in an enterprise email archiving system. Despite the preservation, the defendant objected to the plaintiff’s discovery requests and did not produce any responsive documents during a period where disputes over the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment were happening, until sometime after the court instructed the parties to go forward with discovery. The defendant ultimately produced documents responsive to the plaintiff’s discovery requests.