OPINION AND ORDER Plaintiffs Medcenter Holdings Inc. (“Medcenter Holdings”), Medcenter Solutions SA (“Medcenter Argentina”), Med Solutions Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V., and Medcenter Solutions do Brasil SA, (collectively, “Medcenter”), have brought suit against defendants WebMD Health Corp. (“WebMD”), Medscape, LLC (“Medscape”), and WebMD Global LLC for misappropriation of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. §1836 et seq. and New York state common law; and against defendant WebMD for breach of contract. See Complaint, filed Jan. 3, 2020 (Docket # 1) (“Comp.”); Amended Complaint, filed June 5, 2020 (Docket # 18) (“Am. Comp.”). Defendants have moved for sanctions against plaintiffs for spoliation of evidence.1 For the below reasons, this motion is granted in part and denied in part. I. BACKGROUND Medcenter makes the following allegations in its complaint: Medcenter was a group of companies that collect and provide medical and pharmaceutical information and offer accreditation and continuing education to physicians in Central and South America. See Am. Comp. 28. To support its business, Medcenter developed and maintained two extensive databases. The first, the “Physicians Database,” was a “huge and highly detailed proprietary database of physicians (including dentists) and their areas of practice and specialties, as well as medical students, throughout Latin America.” Id. 31. Medcenter maintained the database “in a Microsoft SQL database structure” and kept it “updated, organized and strictly confidential.” Id. 33. The database reached its “peak” in early 2016, at which point it had “granular” data on about 420,000 medical professionals, which reflected “enormous value” to Medcenter. Id. 40. “Medcenter tightly restricted access to the Physicians Database,” id. 42, only allowing a single database manager named Carlos Padilla to have full access from 2014-2016, id. 42, and allowing some with the title “senior community manager[ ]” to have “ limited access rights,” id. 44. The second database, the “Salesforce Database,” see id. 48, was a database Medcenter used to distribute invitations to medical professionals in the Physicians Database to participate in a program to deliver information about pharmaceutical products that pharmaceutical companies paid Medcenter to advertise, see id.
45-48. Medcenter calls such advertising efforts “Directed Projects.” Id. 46. After Medcenter disseminated information about a pharmaceutical product for a Directed Project to targeted physicians through the Salesforce Database, the physicians could respond to the marketing messages, which provided “useful data and feedback” to Medcenter. Id. 54. “All this unique pharmaceutical drug and medical product project performance data was stored in Medcenter’s Salesforce Database, which was a secure hosted online platform.” Id. 55. Only Daniel Sanmarco, who was the CEO of Medcenter Holdings and Medcenter Argentina, id. 42, and Estefania Aristu, who was the “Salesforce Database administrator for all of Medcenter” since 2003 or 2004, id. 61, had the “access password ‘keys’” to the Salesforce Database, id. 60. Medcenter alleges that the defendants “conspired together to arrange to poach” a Medcenter Argentina executive named Mariel Aristu in June 2016 and that before she left to work for defendants, she stole “extensive amounts” of data from the Physicians Database and the Salesforce Database and provided this data to defendants. Id.
