Laguerre v. Paramount Global, No. 25-CV-879 (JPO), S.D.N.Y. (Aug. 13, 2026), full opinion (PDF)
Vanessa Laguerre sued Paramount Global and the executive she worked for over her termination, seeking backpay for the months that followed. She had already begun emptying her email inbox, by her account to free up storage, taking the records of that job search with it. The defendants moved for an adverse inference instruction under Rule 37(e)(2), which is available only on a finding that she deleted the emails to keep them from the case. They could not establish that intent, the failure that defeats most spoliation motions. Judge Oetken sanctioned her anyway.
The defendants had asked in the alternative for the same sanction under the court’s inherent authority. Where the lost evidence is ESI, Judge Oetken concluded, that power is unavailable. Their motion “rises or falls with Rule 37(e)”.
What Happened
Laguerre’s discovery responses told the defendants she had produced all non-privileged responsive documents in her possession. At her deposition she testified that the job hunt had run to somewhere between twenty and fifty applications, held in two email accounts, one of them opened specifically to catalog the search. She had searched neither account for responsive documents.
When the deposition resumed, Laguerre explained that the applications were gone because she had emptied her inbox for storage. Her method had been to go “down the list of delete, delete, delete”. She could not estimate how many messages it took. Counsel later obtained her login credentials and located evidence of at least fourteen more applications.
The Court’s Analysis
Judge Oetken rejected the inherent-authority alternative. Rule 37(e) as amended in 2015 specifies the findings necessary to justify the harshest sanctions. Inherent power, the court reasoned, cannot be used to circumvent a procedural rule’s clear mandate.
The defendants established the failure to preserve and the prejudice without difficulty. The court found that Laguerre anticipated litigation when she deleted the emails. Her counsel had sent the defendants a draft complaint in early November 2024, one month before the deletions began. Her volitional deletion, the court stated, fell far below her duty to reasonably preserve relevant ESI. On prejudice, the court reasoned that the loss prevented the defendants from testing how diligently she pursued leads and whether she turned down opportunities. A terminated employee’s rejection of a substantially similar job, the court noted, may toll her entitlement to backpay. In the court’s assessment her later production narrowed the evidentiary gap without closing it, leaving between six and thirty-six applications missing.
What the defendants could not show was that Laguerre deleted the emails in order to keep them from the case. Three circumstances did point toward intent, the court acknowledged. The deleted applications, under the standard the court applied, “could fairly be supposed to have been material” to her mitigation. She destroyed them by an affirmative act while she knew or should have known of her duty to preserve. But the court would not find that the loss could be credibly explained only by bad faith. Laguerre had consistently attributed the deletions to running out of free email storage. The court weighed against her that she had deleted from the newer job-search account and not only the older general one, while allowing that a combined inbox display could explain absent-minded deletion of both. A movant must show intent to deprive, not merely intent to destroy. The defendants had shown only that she meant to delete.
The court turned instead to the lesser measures Rule 37(e)(1) allows, which may go no further than necessary to cure the prejudice. Laguerre may not testify, in court or by declaration opposing summary judgment, to any mitigation efforts beyond the applications she produced. The defendants may present evidence of the loss to the jury and move for instructions on evaluating it. The court declined to add monetary sanctions. In the same opinion it resolved the defendants’ summary judgment motion.
Why It Matters
A failed intent showing is the middle of a spoliation motion, not the end of it. Brief the Rule 37(e)(1) measures you want in the alternative, and describe them concretely. A court that denies an adverse inference is looking for the narrower remedy that fits the prejudice you proved.
Plead Rule 37(e) alone when the lost evidence is ESI. A court will not reach its inherent authority to give you a sanction the rule already governs.
Your own client’s personal accounts are the exposure a hold notice misses. The emails that prove a job search, and the messages that decide a discrimination claim, often live nowhere else. A full-mailbox warning on a free email account is all it takes for a client to clear them out in an afternoon. Name the accounts, say that nothing gets deleted from them, and confirm the client understood before the deposition rather than after it.
The full opinion is available as a PDF.
