Spolilation

Kirk v. Ford Motor Company, 2005 Ida. LEXIS 112 (Idaho June 23, 2005) (updated on Jul/12/2005 06:00 pm EST) Summary: Because the plaintiff did not elicit testimony about the company’s destruction of data relevant to the vehicle’s rollover propensity, the trial court did not err in declining to give a jury instruction that the data could be inferred to be unfavorable to the defendant.

Comments

[Peter Mojica]

Destroying data is no longer a simple matter of "del" delete. Nearly all corporate content should be deleted via a process that is governed by corporate policies, and is audited and logged. Note that in the above case, [if], plaintiff was able to successfully infer that Ford deleted any data relevant to the case, the jury would have been instructed to consider that they were trying to hide something. That instruction is an automatic gulity verdict. I use to work in the automotive product liability industry on the defense side, and I know, from experience that the above case was probably a wrongful death claim and the stakes are very high. The penalty for poorly managing your content can be very high, and it’s more than just monetary. The penalty for reputation damage can be larger than any monetary award.