Case Law Alert: Altered Photos Lead to Case Dismissal

While there are new FRCP rules that more clearly define when spoliation sanctions are warranted, the court is still afforded a variety of sources of authority to sanction parties for e-discovery misconduct. In Lawrence v. City of New York (S.D.N.Y. July 27, 2018), the court dismissed plaintiff's case as photos that were purported to be evidence of damages central to the claim were not, in fact, taken at the time of the improper search. 

Overview:

The defendants moved for case dismissal against the plaintiff based on the production of 67 photos that may have been intentionally altered by the plaintiff.

In this civil rights case, the plaintiff contended that defendants entered her house without a warrant and damaged property. Within e-discovery, the plaintiff produced photos to show the condition of her house after the improper search was conducted. The plaintiff testified that the photos produced were taken days after the incident.

Based on conflicting testimony on who took the photos, the defendants produced the photos’ native files, including metadata. After checking the photos’ metadata, the photos were found to have been taken two years after the incident.

Ruling

• Case Dismissed. Based on the inherent power of court, the court dismissed the case due to plaintiff’s continued “pattern of evasion and untruths” surrounding the date on which the photos were taken to bolster the plaintiff’s claims against the defendant.
• Plaintiff’s Attorney Not Sanctioned by Court. The attorney’s production of the staged photos was “careless, but not objectively unreasonable.” The plaintiff’s attorney repeatably tried to gain access to the photos in questions after the incident and was “unfamiliar with the process for checking a digital photograph’s metadata.” Thus, the attorney did not know about the fraudulent nature of the photos and was deemed to have conducted a reasonable inquiry into the completeness and correctness of the production.

Expert Analysis by David Cohen, Esq., Chair of the E-Discovery Group, ReedSmith

Must lawyers producing digital photographs first check metadata to help ensure that the pictures are not fraudulent? Noting that attorneys are generally entitled to rely on representations of their clients, Judge Pauley opined here that Plaintiff’s attorney’s failure to check metadata “may have been careless, but was not objectively unreasonable.”

What does a defensible e-discovery process look like? Download this case law white paper, “What Does “Reasonable” Really Mean?” to find out.