Gladue v. Saint Francis Medical Center

Filing 109

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER - IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that plaintiff's motion for evidentiary and monetary sanctions due to spoliation [Doc. #95] is denied. Signed by District Judge Carol E. Jackson on 3/24/2015. (JMC)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI
SOUTHEASTERN DIVISION
MARIE THERESE GLADUE,

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Plaintiff,
vs.
SAINT FRANCIS MEDICAL CENTER,
Defendant.

Case No. 1:13-CV-186-CEJ

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
This matter is before the Court on plaintiff’s motion for evidentiary and
monetary sanctions due to spoliation of evidence. Defendant has responded, and
the issues are fully briefed.

In this motion, plaintiff asserts that the defendant

failed to produce or delayed producing e-mails that were sent to and from her office
e-mail address during her employment by defendant.
I.

Background

Plaintiff’s employment was terminated in December 2011.

Pursuant to

defendant’s routine audit procedure, plaintiff’s e-mail account was purged in March
2012. At that time, plaintiff had not filed a lawsuit against defendant and had not
filed

a

charge

Commission.
contacted

of

discrimination

with

the

Equal

Employment

Opportunity

Indeed, it was not until June 2012 that plaintiff’s then-attorney

defendant

and

proposed

a

settlement

of

plaintiff’s

employment

discrimination claims.
On June 16, 2014, after this lawsuit was filed, plaintiff submitted a request
for production of all of her work e-mails and her calendar.

Because plaintiff’s

account had been purged, defendant undertook efforts to retrieve the e-mails.

Thus, defendant’s information technology officer conducted a search for all e-mails
sent to or received from plaintiff in the accounts of every employee identified in the
parties’ Fed. R. Civ. P. 26 disclosures. This search initially yielded 7,309 pages of
e-mails and related documents sent to or received from plaintiff by the disclosed
employees. All of these documents were produced on August 14, 2014. Further
search by defendant revealed an additional 17,320 pages of e-mails and related
documents

which

defendant

produced

on

October

27,

2014.

Defendant

acknowledges that the process it employed to retrieve the purged e-mails is not
guaranteed to unearth every lost item.
II.

Discussion

Plaintiff asserts that defendant’s delay producing the e-mails and its
inability to produce all of them warrants evidentiary and monetary sanctions.1
“Absent exceptional circumstances, a court may not impose sanctions under these
rules on a party for failing to provide electronically stored information lost as a
result of the routine, good faith operation of an electronic information system.”
Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e); see Am. Builders & Contractors Supply Co. v. Roofers Mart,
Inc., No. 1:11-CV-19-CEJ, 2012 WL 2992627 (E.D. Mo. July 20, 2012) (discussing
the requirement to find both prejudice to the moving party and bad faith by the
non-moving party before sanctions are permitted).
A litigation hold was not required at the time plaintiff’s e-mails were deleted.
Defendant has shown that plaintiff’s e-mails were deleted as part of a routine
maintenance procedure, rather than in bad faith.
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Moreover, defendant has

Plaintiff also asserts claims irrelevant to the dispute regarding electronically stored information. For
example, she contends that defendant did not participate in mediation in good faith and that
defendant’s interview of a non-party witness was improper. Plaintiff was not granted leave to raise
issues unrelated to the e-mails, so the Court will not address those allegations.

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diligently attempted to recover the missing documents. Defendant’s efforts yielded
17,320 documents, all of which plaintiff had access to since October 27, 2014,
nearly three months before the close of discovery and almost four months before
the deadline for filing dispositive motions.

Thus, as to the timing of the

productions, no exceptional circumstances justify sanctions.
Moreover, plaintiff has failed to show that any of the unrecovered e-mails are
relevant to her claims.

For example, plaintiff asserts that defendant did not

produce e-mails sent to or from Brad Davis at the time when “[his] employment
was in question along with his reluctance to take direction from his female
supervisor.” [Doc. #95-1, at 3]

She also alleges that “an abundance of e-mails”

sent to or from several members of defendant’s executive team are missing. Id.
Plaintiff does not describe the information that was contained in any of these emails nor does she explain the relevance of the information.
Finally, plaintiff is incorrect in her contention that defendant is at an
advantage because it can use the undisclosed e-mails in this litigation.

Absent

substantial justification or harmlessness, Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(c)(1) forbids defendant
from using any document that has not been produced to plaintiff at summary
judgment

or

trial.

Thus,

plaintiff

is

not

prejudiced

and

no

exceptional

circumstances exist to justify sanctions.
Accordingly,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that plaintiff’s motion for evidentiary and
monetary sanctions due to spoliation [Doc. #95] is denied.
___________________________
CAROL E. JACKSON
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Dated this 24th day of March, 2015.
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