New York’s Appellate Courts Surface on Litigation Hold – First Department Confirms Reasonable Anticipation of Litigation Requires Implementation of Litigation Hold
New York’s First Department Appellate Division is the first New York state appellate court to expressly adopt the “reasonable anticipation trigger” articulated in Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, 220 FRD 212 (S.D.N.Y. 2003): “Once a party reasonably anticipates litigation, it must suspend its routine document retention/destruction policy and put in place a ‘litigation hold’ to ensure the preservation of relevant documents.” Id. at 218. On January 31, 2012, the First Department affirmed the November 9, 2010 Order of the Honorable Richard B. Lowe III which awarded an adverse inference sanction to plaintiff, Voom HD Holdings LLC (“Voom”) against defendant EchoStar Satellite, L.L.C. (“EchoStar”). Voom H.D. Holdings LLC v. EchoStar Satellite LLC, 2012 N.Y. Slip Op. 00658 (1st Dep’t 2012). The First Department found the Zubulake standard to be “harmonious” with existing New York precedent in the traditional discovery context and “provides litigants with sufficient certainty as to the nature of their obligations in the electronic discovery context and when those obligations are triggered.”