Brown Jordan International, Inc. v. Carmicle

What happened

Brown Jordan International, a furniture manufacturer, brought claims against Christopher Carmicle, a former executive who left to join a competitor. During the litigation, Carmicle was required to produce electronic evidence from corporate devices. Forensic examination revealed that Carmicle's corporate iPad had been factory-reset shortly before production, destroying its contents, and that a personal laptop had been accessed within 48 hours before the production deadline. The court found that the pre-production device clearing constituted wilful spoliation of electronic evidence and issued an adverse-inference instruction. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The case illustrates how corporate device evidence, including emails, files, calendar data, can be selectively destroyed in the window before a production deadline, and that forensic timestamps on device access and factory-reset operations can expose exactly when that destruction occurred.