Chadwick v. Wiley

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• noting that courts can issue adverse inference instructions for both spoliation and non-production of evidence
• holding employer had obligation to preserve relevant evidence on employee’s laptop at least as early as its receipt of employee’s second EEOC charge alleging employment discrimination
• explaining that in order to impose sanctions under its inherent power, a court must find that a plaintiff has acted in “bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons”
• declining to find a presumption of assistive relevance where the contents of a laptop were erased as part of the company’s procedure
• rejecting the defendant’s “attempts to rationalize its actions” by arguing that although destruction of laptop data “was intentional,” it was “part of its normal business practice,” explaining that a “a good faith explanation does not absolve a party of its culpability”
• ordering when a responding party argued that 26 the requested records (1) are irrelevant; (2) never existed; (3) are not subject to the production 27 because of confidentiality; (4) do not exist in the form sought; and (5) existed but were destroyed, 1 appropriate

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).