Major Tours, Inc. v. Colorel

Major Tours and others (plaintiffs) sued New Jersey officials and a repair shop over alleged racial discrimination in bus inspections; although the State Defendants received a litigation-threat letter in 2003, they didn't issue a formal litigation hold until 2007, and by the time plaintiffs sought pre-2008 emails in discovery, those emails had been deleted from the live server and existed only on backup tapes that would cost roughly $1.5 million to access. State Defendants moved for a protective order excusing production of the backup-tape emails; plaintiffs argued the inaccessibility was State Defendants' own fault for failing to preserve the data as legally required. A magistrate judge sided with State Defendants, finding the parties' agreed-unintentional negligence didn't outweigh the fact that plaintiffs, given the volume of data already produced, were unlikely to find much additional relevant, nonredundant information on the tapes; the magistrate allowed limited tape access with cost-sharing terms, and plaintiffs appealed.