Ride the Lightning

TAKING LAWYERS TO THE WOODSHED FOR E-MAIL DELETION

April 3, 2008

Former Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal was ordered to pay more $18,900 in sanctions after he was found in contempt of court for deleting more than 2,500 e-mails that had been subpoenaed for a federal civil rights lawsuit. The Houston Chronicle reported that the e-mails included explicit sexual images and potentially racist content. There was more than one scofflaw in the office – the general counsel for the district attorney’s office, Scott Durfee was held jointly responsible for paying $5,000 of the sum because he didn’t appropriately advise Rosenthal about his duties of compliance.

So let’s see. We have two attorneys who we hope have heard of the concept of spoliation of electronic evidence. A subpoena is received and one actively destroys evidence and the other apparently doesn’t raise the issue of evidence preservation. Do these guys ever go to ethics CLEs? Congratulations to U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt for taking both of these guys to the woodshed and applying a powerful verbal spanking along with the sanctions, calling Rosenthal’s conduct “venomous and hostile to the judicial process” and his testimony "unreliable and incredible."

The judge’s order may be found at http://www.khou.com/images/0803/rosenthalcontempt.pdf

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