| D. Maryland |
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Reminder: These case digests are provided for informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice. Anyone conducting legal research on a particular topic or in a specific jurisdiction is advised to supplement these materials with their own efforts or those of a qualified attorney whom they have hired for that purpose.2010Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc. et al., Civil No. MJG-06-2662 (D. Md. 9-9-2010) — Plaintiff filed motion seeking default judgment and other sanctions for defendants' alleged destruction of electronically stored evidence [ESI]. At the beginning of his opinion, a clearly-irritated magistrate judge expressed his frustration that defendants could not be fined for the inordinate amount of time spent by the Court and his clerks summarizing and organizing defendants' myriad and often frivolous motions. The core of the case centers around plaintiff's claim that the defendants downloaded copyrighted material from its Web site and used them to unfairly compete with plaintiff. The Court's opinion lists in detail numerous instances in which one or more defendants deleted ESI (with varying degrees of success), including the use of commercial deletion programs like EasyCleaner and CCleaner. The Court also carefully describes the computer forensics work performed to identify defendants' destruction of data and to recover relevant evidence that was not fully destroyed or which was recoverable from multiple locations. In the end, the magistrate recommended the entry of judgment on the copyright claim against defendants, ordered defendants to pay all reasonable costs and attorney's fees associated with the spoliation, and held the main defendant in civil contempt, with a sentence of two years in prison if he failed to pay the award of fees. |
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