In January, Judge Shira Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York, who authored the landmark electronic discovery decisions in Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, issued an opinion that she titled “Zubulake Revisited: Six Years Later.” See Pension Comm. of the Univ. of Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of America Sec. LLC, No. 05 Civ. 9016, 2010 WL 184312, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 15, 2010).
Although the case did not present any “egregious examples of litigants purposefully destroying evidence,” 13 plaintiffs were sanctioned — seven for negligence and six for gross negligence — due to their lackluster preservation, collection, search, and production efforts. Id. at *10, *15-*27. All of those plaintiffs were subject to monetary sanctions, two were to provide additional discovery, and the grossly negligent plaintiffs were subject to a carefully tailored, rebuttable spoliation instruction.
