A federal judge has sanctioned a leading developer of “flash drive” technology for its mishandling of electronic discovery in what the judge called a “David and Goliath-like” struggle.

Southern District Judge William H. Pauley ruled that he would instruct the jury to draw a negative inference from the fact that SanDisk Corp., a company with a market capitalization of $8.7 billion, had lost the hard drives from laptop computers it issued to two former employees who are the plaintiffs in Harkabi v. Sandisk Corp., 08 Civ. 8230.