The defense expert in Physicians Dialysis Ventures, Inc. v. Griffith, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78879 (D.N.J. Oct. 23, 2007), destroyed her notes of conversations she had with the defendant and defense counsel. She was thereafter asked to produce them by the plaintiff and, when she couldn’t, the plaintiff sought spoliation sanctions. Judge Jerome B. Simandle refused to impose sanctions because (1) the expert ‛had no reason to believe that she would be obligated to produce the specific notes taken during her meetings with the Defendant and defense counsel ... since Plaintiffs failed to include any document requests in their request for an extension of time to complete expert discovery“ and did not request the notes until eleven days after the expert served her expert report; (2) ‛[t]he only notes that she discarded related to conversations with Defendant and his counsel, which may have been protected by the attorney-client privilege;“ and (3) the plaintiffs were not prejudiced because they had three opportunities to depose the defendants plus an opportunity to depose the expert. This decision is noteworthy because the majority view on points (1) and (2) is that experts must not destroy any notes and there is no surviving privilege between counsel and expert in light of Rule 26(a)(2)(B) — but point (3) is the reason federal judges are vested with wide discretion (and the judge, unlike those of us just reading the decision, knows what was really going on).
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