A federal judge yesterday ruled that Google intentionally destroyed evidence and must be sanctioned, rejecting the company's argument that it didn't need to automatically preserve internal chats involving employees subject to a legal hold.
"After substantial briefing by both sides, and an evidentiary hearing that featured witness testimony and other evidence, the Court concludes that sanctions are warranted," US District Judge James Donato wrote. Later in the ruling, he wrote that evidence shows that "Google intended to subvert the discovery process, and that Chat evidence was 'lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation' and 'with the intent to deprive another party of the information's use in the litigation.'"
[...]
After yesterday's ruling against Google in the Northern California federal court, a US Department of Justice attorney submitted a notice of the sanctions to the DC-based court. Google is fighting the request for sanctions in that case, too.
Related:
US DoJ, Microsoft and 35 States Support an Appeal of Epic Games-Apple Decision (20220202)
Google's Antitrust Case Won't Go to Trial Until Sept. 2023 (20201221)
Google Reportedly Could be Hit With Second Antitrust Lawsuit This Week (20201217)
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Google reportedly could be hit with second antitrust lawsuit this week:
A group of states is preparing to file a second antitrust lawsuit against Google this week — setting the tech titan up for a tough court battle, according to new reports.
The coalition of states, led by Colorado and Nebraska, is putting the finishing touches on the antitrust complaint against Google that could be filed as soon as Thursday, Politico reported, citing two people close to the investigation.
The suit is expected to focus on Google's dominance in the online search market, particularly changes it has made to the designs of its signature search engine that put rivals at a disadvantage, according to the outlet.
[...] The states will bring their lawsuit in the same Washington, DC federal court where the feds filed theirs, according to Politico. The state attorneys general hope to eventually consolidate their case with the Justice Department's, Reuters reported.
Also at:
Google Hit With 2nd Lawsuit Testing Its Monopoly Power — This One Over Digital Ads
The latest multistate antitrust lawsuit targets Google's ad business
Ten States Sue Google, Alleging Deal With Facebook to Rig Online Ad Market
Google's antitrust case won't go to trial until Sept. 2023:
The U.S. government's attempt to prove Google has been using its dominance of online search to stifle competition and innovation at the expense of consumers and advertisers won't go to trial for nearly three years.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Friday set a tentative trial date of Sept. 12, 2023 for the landmark case that the Justice Department filed two months ago.
"This dispels the notion that we would go to trial quickly," said Mehta during a conference call with government and Google lawyers to go over the ground rules for exchanging confidential documents and deposing top Google executives.
He estimated that once the trial begins it will last about 5 1/2 weeks in his Washington, D.C., courtroom.
[...] With the trial still years away, Google will conceivably become an even more imposing force before the federal government and the attorneys general in dozens of states get their day in court. Another antitrust case filed Thursday is seeking to preempt Google's dominance in other still-emerging fields of technology such as voice-activated devices in the home and internet-connected cars. That case is likely to be combined with the Justice Department's.
US DoJ, Microsoft and 35 states support an appeal of Epic Games-Apple decision:
In another twist to the Epic Games lawsuit against Apple, the US Department of Justice (DoJ), Microsoft, and 35 state attorneys-general have all submitted legal filings disputing the lawsuit's original ruling from September last year.
The original ruling had sided with Apple on nine out of 10 counts. It found Apple engaged in anticompetitive conduct under California's competition laws, but ultimately it ruled the iPhone maker was not an antitrust monopolist.
The ruling, made by District Judge Yvonne Gonzales-Rogers, came to this conclusion as she found Apple's developer program license agreements were not contracts and other competitors had enough market share in submarkets such as mobile gaming.
That decision is now up for appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, with both Apple and Epic Games filing appeals as neither side were happy with the outcome.
In all the third-party briefs, which were filed over the weekend, the consistent argument that arose was Gonzales-Roger's interpretations of the Sherman Act[*] were too narrow and wrong. The Sherman Act is a US law that was specifically drafted to prohibit anticompetitive behaviour.
[*] Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday April 01, @03:42PM
Hard to make a convincing case like this when the entire company is hell-bent on slurping up and storing everybody else's every bit of personal information forever.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday April 01, @03:59PM (9 children)
Lot of corporations routinely destroy old plans, diagrams, documentation, and pretty much anything they fear could be used against them in court, chiefly for that reason. There's also a need to declutter, and that is important, but fear of lawsuits is the main driver. Even the most innocent and understandable of mistakes could be construed as malice and reckless negligence. And you never know what a jury might decide.
For instance, I know of a case in which a person defeated several safety measures to sniff the refrigerant of an A/C unit, and suffered brain damage. His family sued the manufacturer of the A/C system. You might have thought that the manufacturer couldn't possibly be held responsible for that. But the jury awarded the family compensation, because the corporation had money. Now, I could see that being a just and fair decision in the sense that corporations have done an awful lot to prevent the US from having a decent healthcare system. But at the more narrow view of whether this particular corporation should have to pay for someone doing a "hold my beer" stupid act, no, it was not a fair decision. I'm sure also that broad minded view is why O.J. got off. The jury wasn't really ruling in O.J.'s favor, they were ruling against the institutional racism of the L. A. police and society as a whole.
All this vigorous shredding is a shame, too, as it's a loss of history that could be helpful for understanding and avoiding problems and errors.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Saturday April 01, @05:48PM (2 children)
I've been in a big company and been ordered to preserve records that would normally be destroyed for a legal hold.
After something becomes potential legal evidence, destroying it is no longer routine.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday April 02, @12:04AM (1 child)
The destruction is done as policy, with the fact that it is a precaution to head off legal troubles over anything in them that might be incriminating very carefully not included among the stated and plausible reasons. It's done well before any lawsuits are brought. I guess Sarbanes Oxley made it illegal to destroy information about finances, but didn't say anything about engineering documents.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 02, @08:12PM
[...]
That's not happening here. Once it becomes potential evidence in an ongoing investigation or trial, destruction ceases to be routine policy. I agree that it's routine policy to destroy communications (and avoid certain, legally provocative language like "We'll get our pants sued off for this!"), but they're beyond that.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday April 01, @07:01PM (5 children)
I'm somewhat saddened to hear this. I feel for the guy, but I wasn't aware that any refrigerants could cause brain damage. Was he "huffing" it to get high? I can't imagine a quick sniff could cause any appreciable brain damage. All that said, I surmise he didn't have a lot of working brain cells to begin with.
Of course companies try to shortcut everything, but you'd think that if the company complied with all safety rules and regulations, they could not be held accountable. I don't understand our court / judicial system.
I'm thinking a better system would include better overall healthcare, and not just pumping money into a very inefficient and overfed (with money) health system. There's already disability money for people like the freon sniffer. I dunno, I'm not sure how much extra compensation he deserves, and more importantly who should pay for it.
Being that I do a lot of hands-on work, including occasionally refrigeration systems, I'm not sure how you could make them much safer without hugely different design. I mean, I've seen some pretty determined humans who will get into pretty much anything. Battery-powered cutoff tools have enabled all the catalytic converter thefts.
As much as I feel for the guy, and anyone who suffers any kind of injury, I hope said company appeals and wins, unless they really did skip some kind of safety thing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday April 02, @01:35AM (4 children)
Yes, he was trying to get high. IIRC, although freon is non-toxic (manufacturers wouldn't dare use anything known to be toxic when there are hundreds of non-toxic substances that can be used as refrigerants), it does displace oxygen, and it was the oxygen deprivation that caused the brain damage. As to appealing, I didn't hear that they tried. Calculated that just paying the award would be less costly than fighting. They must have thought the case would be a slam dunk, or they might've calculated it wasn't worth fighting the first time either.
Speaking of catalytic converter thefts, scrap metal thieves have also been a headache for A/C manufacturers. These guys take a buzz saw to the coil, causing thousands of $ of damage and venting all the refrigerant into the atmosphere, so they can sell the metal for its scrap value of all of $20. Forced a move away from the use of copper.
Designing a system to be proof against deliberate breaching of that sort is nigh impossible. Some have put cages around A/C units, but that is expensive, and can still be defeated.
US healthcare is insane. Why the people continue to accept the current state of affairs, with price gouging everywhere, is the mystery. Learned helplessness, maybe. Another explanation is malice towards marginalized groups, but I don't entirely buy that one. Still another is that everyone is so busy just trying to put food on the table that healthcare keeps getting pushed down the list of priorities. I've fought back. Tried going through proper channels, disputing the diagnoses and costs, finding errors, and gotten nowhere, so finally just said the hell with it and flat refused to pay it all. Paid some of it, and braced myself for a lawsuit. I was ready to argue my case in court. But they didn't sue. I told the debt collectors that I did not agree with the charges, and they quit calling. So my refusal to pay worked. I've never tried to stiff a creditor before. Felt dirty, and I'm plenty unhappy to have been driven to that. But there, I believe there's been a general uptick of that in the US in recent decades -- more cases of employees being cheated of pay, more credit card delinquency, more monthly fees that consumers somehow can't quit, more rate hikes, and revenue grabs justified with sickeningly fake moralizing about supposed traffic violations like with those red light cameras. Bad for society to have the moral standards frayed, trust in our fellow citizens basic honesty replaced with suspicion.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday April 02, @03:49AM (2 children)
Wow, I've always liked your posts, but wow, thanks. I hate to be cynical (negative) but I think a big component is people are becoming more lazy, coupled with chasing so much entertainment.
If you don't already have one, and you probably do, get a dash camera. 10ish years ago I got blamed for an accident that was absolutely not my fault. Person was in lane next to me, slowing down to turn right, and at last instant she crossed into my lane. If I'd had a dash camera, I'd have gotten $, rather than increased insurance rates.
Thanks for the inspiration re: healthscare. Last summer I went to an ER (long story) and they admitted me but did nothing, and weren't going to do any diagnostic for several days. My insurance had a co-pay of $600 / day to lay in that bed. I asked if I could go home (where I could have normal life) and come back in 3 days but quack said "it doesn't work that way". It infuriates me thinking about it. He wouldn't even let me go out to my car to get my laptop. I signed myself out. I expected to get all kinds of repercussions. I'm still going to find out if I can sue them, or get some kind of investigation.
Don't you know I was getting billed for like $480 from some medical group. It does not say who, when, where, what, nor why. Just a bill: here, pay this because we say so. I haven't responded to them, but again I'm going to see if any govt. agency gets involved in this crap. I recuperated just fine. :)
Familiar story re: HVAC person. Sigh.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Sunday April 02, @06:26PM (1 child)
Thank you. If you want more details on what I learned trying to fight healthcare costs, here you go!
Yes, they will try to hide costs by giving you a simple total, no explanations or breakdowns of anything whatsoever. But, if you ask for an itemized list, they have to give it to you. Then you get a whole bunch of complexity that is intended to still keep some things unclear and even more, to confuse and weary you so that you give up and don't even try to understand it. I was not deterred. I plowed through the whole thing.
A common trick is for the surgeon to employ an anesthesiologist who is out of network. You thought everything was in network, but they slide this one in. Now, actually, insurance is supposed to pay the anesthesiologist. I have little sympathy for them, but, they too are being cheated by this trick. They are supposed to have an opportunity to find one who is in network, but often, by the time they learn of it, the operation is already done. Because the surgeon is in network, they're supposed to pay for any anesthesiologist the surgeon chooses, or so I have been told. But insurance will almost always refuse. That's when the medical providers pull their next low trick: present you with the bill as if it's beyond question that you should pay it. Won't bother you with any details about insurance having refused it. And the amount they ask of you is not the insured rate, oh no, it's the full fantasy list price rate of maybe 5x the insured rate. If you question the providers on why they are trying to collect from you when they know they're supposed to collect from your insurer, they will blow the matter off as being okay because no one pays those bills, so it's not a problem that the bill was false. Besides, they may have had you sign a form, a contract, that says if insurance refuses to pay, you have to pay. Don't believe that one! This is exactly the sort of "surprise bill" I believe has now been outlawed.
My own experience was calling every month for a year to dispute the billing, for 3 visits I made to emergency, for a kidney stone. All I got was a CT scan and pain relief. They did not remove the stone. For what I got, their fantasy list price bill was a whopping $21,000. Insurance reduced that to just under $6000, and wouldn't you know, the deductible on my health insurance was, hey, $6000! I asked for the itemized list. It has all kinds of codes on it for the items and service. These codes are used by Medicare, and you can check what Medicare says those services and supplies are worth. For example, one of the most common items is the bag of saline solution, code J7030. I receive 1 of those for each visit. The hospital billed $308 per bag of saline solution. That is simply outrageous. Then it also got weird. Insurance reduced the bag on my 1st visit to $150, the bag for the 2nd visit was $64, and the last visit was $27. Huh? Shouldn't the same item be the same price each time? I was convinced that was a mistake. I called insurance over and over to get an explanation for the differences, and they couldn't give me one. Half the time, they admitted they simply did not know. The other half, I was given bullshit explanations that were plain wrong. One of the agents suggested the price depended on the day of the week-- more expensive to get service on a weekend. Oh yeah? The $64 was on a Saturday, and the other 2 were weekdays. Another thought it was to account for drugs that had been added to the saline. Wrong again. Every drug given is a separate line item. Still another claimed that the prices were total bull, and the real prices were set in a secret agreement between insurer and provider that neither I nor he would be allowed to examine. Yet another insisted that their computer systems were basically infallible. Whatever the computer said, it said for good reason even if we didn't know the reason, and I should stop making a nuisance of myself, quit bothering them, and pay up like a good citizen. I steadfastly refused to pay until I could be sure there was not an error. And now, what do you suppose the Medicare price for J7030 is? Just under $2!
I also inquired why they charge so very much for a $2 bag of salt water, and got a variety of entertaining answers. It's because it has to be sterilized! I sarcastically replied that the technique known as "boiling" does that very well, and doesn't cost much to do. Another answer was that it's "medical", yeah. Don't you know that magic word explains everything and instantly wins the argument? Then there was the line about the ingredients being expensive. That water has to be distilled! Gee, you can get a gallon bottle of distilled water from any grocery store for about $2, so how's that again about distilled water being expensive? I asked if there were any other ingredients beyond distilled water and salt. Uh, no. Then where's this great cost? It gets pathetic really, the way they keep straining for more bull to justify the price gouging. They may trot out another of their favorites, which is that they have to charge you more to make up for all these impoverished, poor deadbeats they have to treat. Guilt trip you about it. Think of the poor! If you don't pay, they will have to turn away more poor people. What kind of monster are you that you would do that? A very similar excuse is that the high price is to cover other expenses of your care that they are unable to bill.
Another item they had on their list is a "facility fee". I looked in vain for the Medicare rate for that, until I understood that Medicare doesn't have one because they don't consider that a valid fee. The Medicare rate for that could be considered $0. I ran the numbers to get what Medicare thought a fair price for all that I received for the 3 visits, and came up with $286. I offered to pay that amount, and of course they indignantly refused. So, fine, I paid the smallest bill, which was even less, and refused to pay any more. During the arguing over that, they informed me that if I hadn't had insurance, they would've discounted their fantasy list prices by 86% to 90%. WTF? That would've been less than the insured rate! If so, why was I not given an opportunity to not use my insurance? However, it still would've been nigh 10x the Medicare rate. I reached some higher up in the hospital, who was supposedly responsible for administering and setting the prices. This jerk claimed not to know what a chargemaster was. I refuse to believe that anyone in that line of work has never heard of a chargemaster, which meant, he was lying, and lying badly. Did he think I was that big an idiot? Also refused to give even one inch on the prices. That was the moment I decided to stiff them.
I finally learned, from a friend who sold health insurance for a living (now ironically deceased thanks to COVID and refusing to get vaccinated), what I believe to be the correct explanation for the prices. And it's local to the state of Texas. In Texas, when you go to emergency, they assess the severity on a scale of 5. 1 is minor, and 5 is the highest level, you need help RIGHT NOW, or you will certainly die. Prices of everything, including saline solution, depend on that level. I was assessed as level 4 the 1st time, level 2 the 2nd visit, and level 1 the last visit. One last wrinkle in this, however. Level 4 and 5 are considered so severe that it is accepted that you will need a bag of saline solution. For those levels, if they charge a facility fee, they should not also charge separately for a bag of saline solution, that is actually bundled in to the facility fee. So they were double billing me. I learned of that one from talking with yet another group, these Medical Billing Advocates.
One more run in with the outrageous price gouging: Kid got a splinter, and the S.O. would not let me simply remove it with a tweezers, panickily insisting on rushing to the pediatrician. Where they did almost exactly what I proposed, used a tweezers to get the splinter out. For this service, we were billed $40, at first. $40 was the copay amount. I thought that outrageous, but they weren't done. Later, a bill came for $130 more, for "surgery". Removing a splinter counts as surgery?!? I was furious and let them know. The S. O. admitted that insisting on going to the doctor was a mistake.
All this is really for rather minor things. As the insurer said, since kidney stones aren't life threatening, well, maybe I shouldn't have gone to the emergency at all. Funny how kidney stones are so very conveniently classed so, yet count as a pre-existing condition that serves old style health insurance as a wonderful excuse for denying all further care for any kidney problems whatsoever, no matter how unrelated to the stones. I shudder to think what I will run into if or when the day comes that I need extensive care, like, say, for cancer or heart disease. I will doubtless also be less fit and less able to fight back against the price gouging. The whole idea that a sick person can haggle for their healthcare and thereby get a good deal is such bull.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday April 02, @09:30PM
OMG, thank you for all of that. I know ambulances are famous for double-billing. Can't blame them for trying, right? (that was sarcasm for anyone who might not grasp the absurdity of it).
I didn't know and am surprised that the Medicare rate for saline is that low. They buy them by the truckload, but having worked in various manufacturing situations I can see where it would cost a lot more than $2 to make and ship them. The sterility is super-critical. But that varying cost shows how BS the whole medical billing system has become.
20 years ago I had a kidney stone. I guess the "standard of care" is to let you suffer for a few days. First two days I was in and out of severe pain. I went to ER early morning of day 3, and by the end of day 4 they (hospital) decided to do CT, realized it wasn't going to pass, removed it laparoscopically in IR. When I woke up I felt stupendous, was starved, and wanted to run a marathon. They kept me overnight for observation. Medicare code for CT was something like $650, but they billed me $2,800. I researched and learned of these practices. 60 Minutes (or some similar show) did at least one show segment on this problem.
In the biggest picture way possible, WTF is wrong with our "country"??
I kind of understand some of what you described, including the parts where they try to offset the costs of the uninsured, but most of what you wrote shows how horrifically screwed up the US healthscare system has become.
Being a slight economist, my worry is: the more money made available to the healthcare system, the more they'll raise prices- because they can. How is this not a major topic of work for Congress?
I have a really good Nikon stereo zoom microscope (macroscope). I just pulled some kind of stinging hair-thin little spike I got from pulling / cutting some weeds. Didn't even see the hair-like needles. If a tweezer doesn't work, and I have several Swiss stainless laboratory-grade ones, I use the tip of a very tiny hypodermic needle. It does an amazing job of catching the edge of the splinter and lifting it out. So much relief!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 02, @08:16PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jelizondo on Saturday April 01, @04:09PM (2 children)
We need to stop treating corporations as having rights, like to free speech [wikipedia.org], like they were humans when it is convenient for them and then just slapping a fine because the corporation can't be thrown in jail when it commits a crime.
What's the equivalent of jail for a corporation? It gets closed for the jail period a person doing the same crime would get.
Alternatively, the C-suite guys do the time.
Can't have it both ways.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mcgrew on Saturday April 01, @10:21PM
If we're going to give them rights then they ought to go back to having responsibilities. When a corporation commits a felony, the CEO, Board of Directors, and all management needs hard jail time.
Equal protection under the law, my ass. I'll believe it when I see Trump behind bars. I'm not holding my breath. When he said he could get away with shooting someone on fifth avenue, he was right. So could any other multimillionaire.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 02, @02:17PM
What should happen is make those responsible do time where the most senior of those provably responsible do more time or even all the time if it can be shown the blame and idea is mostly their responsibility.
Also make it legal to secretly record any orders that might be illegal.
So all you bunch told to do illegal stuff, get enough evidence and get those people in prison.
(Score: 3, Funny) by epitaxial on Saturday April 01, @05:06PM
Now when can I expect jail sentences for those responsible?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Saturday April 01, @05:31PM
According to my reading, believe a lawyer over me. This must have been unusually bad.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 01, @06:56PM (2 children)
Some people need to be in prison. Let's say that you and your sibling, or you and your spouse, destroyed evidence during a court case. You bet your ass that you'd go to prison for it. It wouldn't be a mere contempt of court charge, either. Conspiracy charges would be forthcoming, promptly.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Saturday April 01, @10:25PM
Agreed. When any corporation is found guilty of a felony, its entire leadership should go to prison. Don't hold your breath in our fascist society.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday April 02, @03:20AM
Would that include flushing classified documents down the toilet or is there an unwritten rule about witch-hunts that'd provide a loophole?
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩