Case in point: Jones v. Riot Hospitality Group, which the 9th Circuit just decided.
Alyssa Jones sued Riot for discrimination. During discovery, Riot obtained text messages exchanged between Jones, her friends, and co-workers between December 2015 and October 2018. Riot became suspicious when is noticed that Jones abruptly stopped communicating with several people with whom she had been messaging almost daily. In response to a subpoena, Jones' third-party computer vendor produced a spreadsheet showing that messages between Jones and her co-workers had been deleted from Jones' mobile phone. In later depositions, two of the co-workers testified that they had exchanged text messages with Jones about the case since October 2018. After Jones failed to comply with the district court's order to produce those messages, the court ordered the parties to retain a third-party forensic search specialist to review the phones of Jones and her co-workers.
After Riot then submitted a report from the third-party vendor that Jones had undertaken an "orchestrated effort to delete and/or hide evidence subject to the Court's order," the court dismissed Jones's lawsuit with prejudice as a sanction. (It also fined Jones and her lawyer $69,576.)
The court of appeals had little difficulty affirming the dismissal sanction"
Alyssa Jones sued Riot for discrimination. During discovery, Riot obtained text messages exchanged between Jones, her friends, and co-workers between December 2015 and October 2018. Riot became suspicious when is noticed that Jones abruptly stopped communicating with several people with whom she had been messaging almost daily. In response to a subpoena, Jones' third-party computer vendor produced a spreadsheet showing that messages between Jones and her co-workers had been deleted from Jones' mobile phone. In later depositions, two of the co-workers testified that they had exchanged text messages with Jones about the case since October 2018. After Jones failed to comply with the district court's order to produce those messages, the court ordered the parties to retain a third-party forensic search specialist to review the phones of Jones and her co-workers.
After Riot then submitted a report from the third-party vendor that Jones had undertaken an "orchestrated effort to delete and/or hide evidence subject to the Court's order," the court dismissed Jones's lawsuit with prejudice as a sanction. (It also fined Jones and her lawyer $69,576.)
The court of appeals had little difficulty affirming the dismissal sanction"
"There was ample circumstantial evidence that Jones intentionally destroyed a significant number of text messages and collaborated with others to do so…. The court's conclusion 'that [Jones] affirmatively selected certain text messages for deletion while otherwise preserving text messages sent around the same time' is supported by the record."
This misconduct is about as bad as it gets in civil litigation. Our job as your litigation counsel is to spin facts in the light most favorable to you, even the bad ones. It's not our job to destroy evidence to obscure those bad facts. That's called spoliation, and it's the easiest way to lose your case.