Litigation

Court of Chancery Explains Sanctions for eDiscovery Abuse

By Morris James LLP

TR Investors LLC v. Genger, C.A. 3994-VCS (December 9, 2009)

This is the most important recent decision on the Court's handling of discovery of emails and other e-documents. For spoliation, the Court imposed four forms of sanction: (1) it increased the burden of proof to a clear and convincing standard for the offending party to prove his case, (2) it held his testimony must be corroborated by other evidence to meet that burden, (3) it denied any claim of attorney-client privilege to certain documents, and (4) it imposed attorney fees for the sanction motion work.

This is also a good read for its explanation of how e-documents are stored in computers and servers and may be retrieved long after they were thought to be destroyed.

Full post as published by Delaware Business Litigation Report on December 09, 2009 (boomark / email).