The amended version of Rule 37(e) of the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure was intended to narrow the latitude that courts have when imposing sanctions on a company for failing to preserve electronically stored information required for discovery in a lawsuit. In light of that, some observers find it surprising that on July 12 the U.S. district court in Wilmington, Delaware slapped Plantronics with as harsh a penalty as it did—a $3 million fine—based on an estimated thousands of deleted e-mails that were likely relevant to the plaintiff’s antitrust allegations against Plantronics.
