Are E-Discovery Sanctions More Fear than Reality?

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Article by Gina Passarella on law.com on the LTN website.

This article discusses results of a study by King & Spalding regarding sanctions. As the article points out, while sanctions are a very real threat, the parties are given plenty of chances to avoid them if they comply with court directives.

The article states, "Failure to preserve data is by far the most common driver of sanctions awards, followed by failure to produce the data. Perhaps that is why so many e-discovery attorneys said preservation, and the ambiguous rules surrounding it, is the biggest potential pitfall for lawyers in the e-discovery process.
Sanctions include adverse inference instructions to the jury, outright dismissals of cases, attorney fee and cost awards, or disallowance of certain defenses at trial. Of the 77 cases dealing with monetary sanctions, awards have ranged from $250 to $8.8 million. There were five cases with more than $5 million in awards and another four cases with more than $1 million in sanctions, the study said."