A federal judge accused Google of falling "strikingly short" of retaining employee chat messages for potential legal evidence as he ruled sanctions "were warranted."
The judge wrote Tuesday in a filing that the court "concludes that Google did not take reasonable steps to preserve electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation."
He said Google employee chat message 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 litigation," according to the court document.
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The order came from U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge James Donato in the multidistrict litigation case of Epic Games, Inc. v. Google LLC et al, an antitrust case related to the Google Play Store.
The judge alleged Google "gave each employee carte blanche to make his or her own call about what might be relevant in this complex antitrust case, and whether a Chat communication should be preserved." The tech giant, he suggested, could have made it so that all chats were saved rather than some getting automatically deleted after a certain time frame.
"Our teams have conscientiously worked, for years, to respond to Epic and that state AG's discovery requests, and we have produced over 3 million documents, including thousands of chats," a Google spokesperson told FOX Business. "We’ll continue to show the court how choice, security and openness are built into Android and Google Play."
Donato, in his order, noted a decision on the antitrust case will not be made "on the basis of lost Chat communications." Further proceedings are needed for the court to figure out an "appropriate non-monetary sanction," he added.
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The judge ordered the plaintiffs to create a statement detailing proposed attorneys’ fees and costs racked up related to a "Rule 37 motion" by an April 21 deadline. He said it was "entirely appropriate" for the tech giant to cover such fees as a monetary sanction.
In a separate case brought by the Department of Justice, Google was recently accused of not retaining some chat communications properly, claims the tech giant pushed back on, according to Reuters.
FOX Business also reached out to Epic Games for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Google Play has been around for years and, as of June 2021, had over 2 million apps and games on it.
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