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Prince Moves to Sanction


This past spring, Magistrate Judge Tony Leung issued a decision, Paisley Park Enter., Inc. v. Boxill, No. 17-cv-1212 (WMW/TNL),

2019 WL 1036058 (D. Minn. 2019) granting the Plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions for the spoliation of evidence. The estate of Prince brought a copyright infringement against a sound engineer who worked for the late signer.

The Defendants not only failed to disable the autodelete option on the cell phones of custodians containing relevant text messages but also intentionally wiped the content of the phones after they realized that litigation might arise.

Judge Leung fined the Defendants $10,000 but declined to issue an adverse inference instruction. “The Court believes that Plaintiffs’ request for an order presuming the evidence destroyed was unfavorable to the RMA Defendants and/or for an adverse inference instruction may well be justified. But given the fact that discovery is still on-going, the record is not yet closed, and the case is still some time from trial, the Court believes it more appropriate to defer consideration of those sanctions to a later date, closer to trial.”. Id. at 7.


Sean O'Shea has more than 20 years of experience in the litigation support field with major law firms in New York and San Francisco.   He is an ACEDS Certified eDiscovery Specialist and a Relativity Certified Administrator.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the owner and do not reflect the views or opinions of the owner’s employer.

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