Play Store Plaintiffs Urge ‘Substantial’ Penalty for Google’s Chat Deletions

Google’s court-ordered production in the consolidated antitrust litigation against the Google Play Store contains a “trove” of chats “establishing beyond any doubt that the company’s intentional campaign to destroy sensitive communications resulted in the loss of invaluable communications regarding matters at the heart of these cases.” So said the plaintiffs’ supplemental reply brief Monday (docket 3:21-md-02981) Monday in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. U.S. District Judge James Donato ordered the chat production Feb. 27 as an “experiment” to test Google’s contention that its evidence destruction didn’t prejudice the plaintiffs, said the brief. “The outcome of the Court-ordered experiment is clear,” it said. Google’s conduct prejudiced the plaintiffs and “requires a substantial, trial-related penalty,” it said. The newly produced chats “reveal a company-wide culture of concealment coming from the very top, including CEO Sundar Pichai, who is a custodian in this case,” it said. Google destroyed “innumerable” chats with the intent to deprive the plaintiffs and other litigants “of the use of these documents in litigation,” it said. Though the court previously suggested it’s unlikely “to order an instruction that the jury must find that the destroyed evidence would have been unfavorable to Google,” the plaintiffs submit that the newly produced chats “support such a remedy,” it said.