In recent years, New York courts have been increasingly called upon to determine whether and what sanctions are appropriate for the spoliation of electronically stored information (ESI).
Under New York law, spoliation sanctions may be available where a litigant, intentionally or negligently, disposes of crucial items of evidence before an adversary has an opportunity to inspect them, thus depriving the party seeking the sanction of the means for proving his claim or defense. New York courts have consistently held that a party seeking sanctions for spoliated evidence must demonstrate three elements: “(1) that the party with control over the evidence had an obligation to preserve it at the time it was destroyed; (2) that the records were destroyed with a culpable state of mind; and (3) that the destroyed evidence was relevant to the party’s claim or defense such that the trier of fact could find that the evidence would support that claim or defense.”1
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