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U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., lambasted
Google for allegedly failing to preserve internal chats and
abusing protections for legal communications, but he declined to
formally sanction the company.
The U.S. Justice Department had asked Mehta to punish Google for
what the government called its “systematic destruction” of
employee messages and “flagrant misuse” of the attorney-client
privilege that shields communications with lawyers.
Mehta said it was not necessary to rule on Google's evidence
handling to decide whether the company violated antitrust law.
“Still, the court is taken aback by the lengths to which Google
goes to avoid creating a paper trail for regulators and
litigants,” Mehta wrote. Google “trained its employees, rather
effectively, not to create ‘bad’ evidence,” he said.
Google and the Justice Department declined to comment on Mehta’s
decision not to sanction Google over its evidence safeguards.
Google has denied violating antitrust law and said on Monday it
will appeal the court's ruling. It has also denied mishandling
evidence.
Google had a longstanding practice of automatically deleting
employees' chat messages after 24 hours unless the person
clicked a “history on” button to preserve them. It changed the
policy last year to better safeguard chats.
Mehta also criticized the company about its “communicate with
care” initiative, which involved Google employees adding lawyers
to messages and marking them “attorney/client privileged.”
The fight over Google’s chat records has extended into other
cases challenging the tech company’s business practices.
A federal judge in California last year ruled that Google
“willfully” failed to keep relevant chat evidence in a lawsuit
filed by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games.
Epic prevailed at that trial, which accused Google of overly
controlling the Android app market.
Later this month, a federal judge in Virginia will hear
arguments about evidence destruction in the Justice Department’s
lawsuit against Google over its digital advertising practices. A
non-jury trial is scheduled for next month.
Mehta said his decision to not sanction Google was not an
exoneration.
“Any company that puts the onus on its employees to identify and
preserve relevant evidence does so at its own peril,” Mehta
wrote. “Google avoided sanctions in this case. It may not be so
lucky in the next one.”
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella in Washington; Editing by David
Bario and Matthew Lewis)
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