Adverse Inference Ordered as Penalty for Deleting Blackberry Data
Southeastern Mechanical Services, Inc. v. Brody, 2009 WL 2883057 (M.D. Fla. Aug. 31, 2009).
In this federal court ruling from Florida, the court imposed the penalty of an adverse inference due to the spoliation of data on a Blackberry by employees of a company that was subject to a TRO that included a duty to preserve relevant data. The defense that the data on the Blackberry was also saved on the company's servers was unavailing as the court observed that not everything on the Blackberry was saved on the company's servers, such as calendar entries and text messages that were entered on the Blackberry. Hat tip to the Electronic Discovery Law blog which has a more complete review of the case and a link to the actual opinion of the court.
