Spoliation — the destruction or alteration of evidence that may be relevant to ongoing or anticipated litigation — dominated judicial agendas during 2010.
The year’s most dramatic moment arrived when exasperated Chief Magistrate Judge Paul Grimm, of the U.S. District Court in Maryland, issued an unprecedented civil contempt sanction, requiring a defendant to either pay plaintiff’s six-figure attorneys’ fees and costs, or serve up to two years in jail — for “the single most egregious example of spoliation that I have encountered in any case that I have handled or in any case described in the legion of spoliation cases I have read in nearly 14 years on the bench.” Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe et al., No. MJG-0602662 (D.Md.Sept 9, 2010).
