Forsyth County Superior Court Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Bagley has ordered sanctions against Pulte Home Corp. for destroying e-mails and other electronic evidence in an environmental lawsuit.
The sanctions, which will be determined in a hearing March 31, include paying attorney fees for plaintiffs suing the developer.
"We expect that attorney fees and costs will be in the range of $400,000 -- making it the largest award of sanctions for willful spoliation of electronically stored information in Georgia history," said Michael P. Carvalho, attorney for Adele and Tim Simerly, who are suing Pulte over stormwater runoff from the Fieldstone subdivision.
Pulte's attorney, W. Gordon Hamlin Jr. of Bryan Cave, responded to questions about the case by e-mail with a prepared statement approved by the company's in-house counsel. "Pulte produced an enormous quantity of documents to counsel for the Simerlys," the statement said. The plaintiffs did not request documents that would have included e-mails "other than a few distinct categories." Furthermore, "none of the deleted e-mails" are relevant to the lawsuit.
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Source: law.com
By: Katheryn Hayes Tucker
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