Stratacache, Inc. v. Wenzel

Citations

• 2019 Ohio 3523

Syllabus

The trial court did not abuse its discretion by entering default judgment against appellant and dismissing his counterclaims and third-party complaint as a sanction for discovery violations. Emails involving appellant, his former employer, and that employer's customers were highly relevant to issues disputed among the parties. After the trial court ordered appellant to produce for forensic examination a laptop computer he used for such emails, appellant reformatted that computer and installed software updates that deleted all information the employer sought through discovery requests. Although appellant belatedly claimed to have preserved the deleted information on \backups\ held by his attorney, the employer's computer expert testified that such backups would not necessarily contain all data originally removed from the computer. The employer's motion seeking default judgment and dismissal as discovery sanctions provided adequate notice to appellant of the prospect of those sanctions. The sanctions imposed by the trial court also were not an abuse of discretion or disproportionate to the nature of appellant's violation, as evidence presented at the sanctions hearing supported the trial court's determination that appellant deliberately destroyed evidence, prejudicing the employer's ability both to prove its own claims and defend against appellant's claims. The court acted within its discretion in declining to require that employer's computer expert re-examine the computer after appellant's expert purportedly \restored\ the missing data. Judgment affirmed.