Extract from Kelly Twigger’s article “#CaseoftheWeek Episode 85: Intentional Deletion of Slack Data Leads to Adverse Inference”
Episode 85 of Case of the Week brings you a new case and decision. The matter is Drips Holdings, LLC v. Teledrip LLC, 2022 WL 4545233 (N.D. Ohio 2022), and the decision is from September 29, 2022 by United States District Judge John R. Adams. We’ll discuss how intentional deletion of Slack data and a party’s failure to change its retention on Slack resulted in spoliation and the entry of adverse inference instruction against the spoliating party.
Keep reading or watch the video to understand the eDiscovery issues.
Introduction
Good morning. Welcome to Episode 85 of our Case of the Week series published in partnership with ACEDS. My name is Kelly Twigger. I am the CEO and founder of eDiscovery Assistant, as well as the Principal at ESI Attorneys, and I’m very happy to be here with you today. Thank you so much for joining me on this latest episode.
We’re going to jump into this week’s decision from Drips Holdings, LLC v. TeleDrip, LLC. In this decision, District Court Judge, John Adams, upheld the trial court’s report and recommendations sanctioning defendants for spoliation of Slack data, but rejected the magistrate’s recommendation of a permissible adverse inference instruction and instead ordered a mandatory adverse inference instruction against the defendants.
A key case today involving Slack data; Slack is a source of ESI that is an instant messaging platform that we’ve discussed several times on our Case of the Week series. It’s now a very common platform in many organizations that are leveraging it and is recognized as a key source of ESI for discovery.
