Google Denies States’ Discovery Obligation Claims

Google “took reasonable steps” to “preserve” all relevant user chat information in Utah’s multistate antitrust lawsuit against Google’s app store, the platform argued Thursday in 3:21-cv-05227 before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (see 2204010037). Google asked the court to deny the states’ request for a sanction in the form of an adverse inference instruction. The states have failed to demonstrate they “suffered any prejudice” and failed to show Google intended to “deprive” the plaintiffs of data and information. Google argued it “fully complied” with discovery obligations, including the preservation of relevant chats and the issuing of "litigation hold notices regarding chat preservation and automatically preserving certain categories of chats.”