Eaton Executives' Affidavits Focus on E-discovery Problems

http://ow.ly/blf6p

An article by Sue Reisinger posted on law.com on the Corporate Counsel webpage.

This article discusses a specific litigation, and refers to a recently filed affidavit that outlines eDiscovery difficulties that were experienced by one of the corporate parties.

The article states, "In the end, two top litigation counsel at Eaton Corporation were ushered out of their jobs not because of a botched lawsuit the company lost against a rival firm and six ex-engineers, but because the two lawyers screwed up the production of emails for discovery.
At least that’s the story now coming out in affidavits filed in response to a court order demanding how and why the emails weren’t produced years ago in the long-running suit."  A link to further information about the suit is provided in the article.

The article mentions allegations of attempts by Eaton to hire a "secret" lawyer, who attempted to influence the Judge.  The article also states that apparently emails exist that indicate knowledge of misconduct on the part of Eaton's in-house counsel.  The author writes, "The newly found emails relate to that time and that issue. The defendants allege that the emails show general counsel Mark McGuire, who was part of the online discussion, and other Eaton lawyers were well aware of the attempts to influence the judge at the time.
McGuire had testified otherwise in 2008, saying he didn’t recall seeing any such emails. The company has declined to discuss details of the suit, including the email controversy.

Whether the new emails were inadvertently overlooked or deliberately withheld will now be a question for the court, which already sanctioned Eaton $1.5 million for the original misconduct."

There are further allegations that Eaton may have deliberately failed to search their email system, as an I.T.  employee of Eaton claims he was instructed to avoid searching the email system.  The I.T. employee further alleges that he reported the instruction he received to his supervisor, in that he felt the instruction to avoid searching the email system was improper.  This fact is in dispute as outside counsel for Eaton alleges that the method used to search the emails failed and there was no deliberate instruction to avoid searching the email.

P.S.  This case can be added to the growing list of cases in which "smoking gun" evidence exists in the form of emails.  An argument can certainly be made to add this case to any top 10 list of dumbest emails of all time.