You have to admire the candor of companies that make their living destroying data. They leave nothing to the imagination. As observed by District Judge Donald J. Stohr in Ameriwood Indus. v. Liberman, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74886 (E.D. Mich. July 3, 2007): ‛Window Washer is advertised as a tool to make electronic files unrecoverable. While the name sounds less reprehensible than the ‘Evidence Eliminator’ software used in Communications Center, [Inc. v. Hewitt, No. Civ.S-03-1968 WBS KJ, 2005 WL 3277983, at *3 (E.D. Cal. Apr. 5, 2005),] the purpose is the same.“ The factual scenario in Ameriwood was hardly subtle:
Plaintiff requested images of defendants’ hard drives. Defendants refused. Plaintiff sought a motion to compel from the Court. Defendants installed software on their computers making potentially relevant documents and data unrecoverable. Defendant Liberman made mass deletions from his computer and portable hard drive. The Court compelled the production of the hard drives. Defendants continued to run the software and Liberman made at least one additional deletion of a file. In short, defendants knew information on their computers was discoverable and they destroyed it. The discovery process cannot and will not function when a party exhibits such blatant disregard for basic tenets of the system.
Judge Stohr entered a default judgment for the plaintiff, and struck the defendants’ answer and counterclaim, as an inherent power sanction.
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