Magistrate Judge Robert Levy
SJS Distribution contracted to buy $3 million worth of diapers from Sam’s East Inc. (Sam’s Club). It could not sell mispackaged diapers to its intended buyer. In 2011 Sam’s Club sought materials related to the diapers’ purchase, packaging nonconformities and SJS’s resale efforts. SJS’s 2012 objection to a document request included its presidents’ verified statement that SJS “did not anticipate” litigation or the need to save all email communications with defendant. SJS later produced another 181 pages of relevant documents. In 2012, Sam’s Club obtained 34 pages of electronic communications through third-party discovery. Unpersuaded by SJS’s argument that it did not anticipate litigation and the need to preserve all electronic communications, the court partly granted defendant’s motion for sanctions on spoliation grounds. Because deleted emails would have aided defendant in gaining information about the attempted resale of the diapers, a spoliation sanction was appropriate. The proper remedy is an adverse inference against SJS that it negligently deleted relevant emails, favorable to Sam’s Club, in late 2010. Such adverse inference restores Sam’s Club to the position it would have been in absent SJS’s wrongful destruction of evidence.
