US Health Insurer Premera Blue Cross Accused of Destroying Evidence in Data Breach Lawsuit (zdnet.com)

Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for ZDNet: The plaintiffs of a class-action lawsuit against health insurance provider Premera Blue Cross are accusing the organization of "willfully destroying" evidence that was crucial for establishing accurate details in a security breach incident. In court documents filed last week obtained by ZDNet, plaintiffs claim that Premera intentionally destroyed a computer that was in a key position to reveal more details about the breach, but also software logs from a security product that may have shown evidence of data exfiltration. Establishing if hackers stole data from Premera's systems is crucial for the legal case. Breach victims part of the class-action will be to claim a right for monetary compensation, while Premera may argue that since hackers did not steal data from its servers, there is no tangible harm to victims. The class-action lawsuit is in connection to a March 2015 announcement. Back then, Premera announced that hackers breached its systems and gained access to computers holding the personal and medical data of over 11 million Americans.

Comments

Re:Can that really work?

[TubeSteak]

The spoliation inference is a negative evidentiary inference that a finder of fact can draw from a party's destruction of a document or thing that is relevant to an ongoing or reasonably foreseeable civil or criminal proceeding: the finder of fact can review all evidence uncovered in as strong a light as possible against the spoliator and in favor of the opposing party.

E-mail/document retention policies are not a get out of jail free card.

If the company can "reasonably foreseeable" the documents will be needed, they're obliged to preserved them, lawsuit or not.

At the bare minimum, a judge will tell the jury to interpret destroyed evidence in the worst possible light for the destroyer.

In a worst case scenario, depending on your jurisdiction, destroying evidence will spawn a separate civil lawsuit or a criminal prosecution (fines and jail time).

Destroying evidence means you're stupid or hiding something much worse.