ComputerForensicsDigest.com

Motion for Rule 37 Sanctions Denied -- Plaintiff sued defendant, alleging a variety of injuries related to his employment termination. The defendant denied the charges, contending that plaintiff was fired for using one of the defendant's static IP addresses to operate a commercial pornography Web site.

 

Plaintiff argued that he had no access to network resources needed to assign a static IP address, and filed discovery requests seeking various server logs that plaintiff alleged would prove that he did not have the requisite access. Pursuant to a disovery order, the defendant search for the server logs for various specified dates, and reported back to the court that the logs in question no longer existed. Plaintiff filed a Rule 37 motion, alleging spoliation for defendant's failure to preserve the logs, and seeking an order permitting a computer forensics examination of the servers to see if the requested data could be found. The court concluded that the logs in question were not relevant to the matter in dispute, insofar as defendant did not rely on the logs in any way during its determination to fire the plaintiff. The court also found credible that the server logs "rolled over" on a regular schedule, and that the logs in question were overwritten long before the defendant was on notice of the pending litigation. As a result, plaintiff failed to meet his burden of showing that the defendant had either failed to properly preserve evidence or illegally destroyed it.