3 Dozen Plaintiff States Press Their Case for Sanctions vs. Google

Google employees “intentionally shifted relevant business discussions to communication methods they knew would delete in 24 hours to circumvent Google’s own litigation holds and discovery obligations,” said the 38 plaintiff states and the District of Columbia in their reply brief Tuesday (docket 1:20-cv-03010) in U.S. District Court for D.C. in support of sanctions against Google (see 2302240034). Google “encouraged this conduct by creating a culture of communicating in chats that would be destroyed even with the existence of a litigation hold,” said the reply. Google failed to take “reasonable steps to monitor the effectiveness of its litigation hold and ensure employees were abiding by its terms,” it said. Google, as a result, “failed to ensure that its litigation responsibilities were fulfilled and thus permitted the spoliation of relevant materials,” it said.