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On Friday, Judge Donato vowed to investigate Google for intentionally and systematically suppressing evidence, calling the company’s conduct “a frontal assault on the fair administration of justice.” We were there in the courtroom for his explanation.
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I’m really not in love with the headline, which is admittedly The Verge’s own. The judge didn’t say he was going to “investigate” Google independently. Judges don’t have that power. He said he’d “get to the bottom of” the spoliation question later. He’s saying that Google had better be prepared to deal with this issue much more fully in trials to come, but for purposes of this one, he’ll settle on giving the jury an instruction about permissible inferences.<p>In other words, Google had better be ready to receive the mother of all sanctions motions (possibly sua sponte).
> Google declined to comment to The Verge on Judge Donato’s statements. Walker testified in court that the auto-delete setting is now off by default for all Google employees.<p>He's stated that, by default, it's disabled. Is it also now disabled for people who have modified the setting prior to this, and have any policies regarding auto-deleting messages been put into place ...?