Gibbons Law Alert
In Pegasus Aviation I, Inc. v. Varig Logistica S.A., the New York Court of Appeals held that failure to preserve ESI was simple, not gross, negligence, and remanded to the trial court for a determination of whether the destroyed evidence was relevant to the plaintiff’s claims and what sanction, if any, is appropriate.
Confidentiality agreements and protective orders are a commonplace, yet indispensable, feature of modern commercial litigation. These agreements are typically the end result of a series of negotiations between counsel specifically designed to balance the seemingly incompatible objectives of ensuring ready access to vital evidence and ensuring that sensitive information, such as trade secrets, remains carefully shrouded from the public eye and industry competitors. The importance of ensuring that sensitive information remains confidential vis-à-vis the world at large during a lawsuit cannot be overstated. Confidentiality agreements often provide detailed provisions addressing who may access information and how information may be used. Once the litigation has concluded, parties are often faced with the sometimes challenging task of ensuring that all confidential information is either returned to the producing party or destroyed. Without proper planning, it may be difficult to put the proverbial genie back into the bottle.
Orbit One Communications, Inc. v. Numerex Corp., 2010 WL 4615547 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 26, 2010) represents a dichotomy in jurisprudence on ESI preservation efforts and the imposition of automatic sanctions. In Orbit One, Magistrate Judge James C. Francis, IV found that regardless of how inadequate a litigant’s preservation efforts may be, sanctions are not appropriate without proof that “information of significance” has been lost. The court determined that the threshold determination must be “whether any material that has been destroyed was likely relevant even for purposes of discovery.” In so holding, the court discussed and diverged from Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s decision in Pension Committee of the University of Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of America Securities, LLC, which earlier held that sanctions may be warranted for inadequate preservation efforts even if no relevant evidence is lost. 685 F. Supp.2d 456, 465 (S.D.N.Y. 2010).