Google’s groundbreaking ruling warns companies to preserve evidence

The landmark ruling on Monday, which found that Alphabet subsidiary Google illegally monopolized web search, also came with a reprimand for the tech giant’s concealment of potential evidence in the case and a warning to other companies about data protection.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta of Washington sharply criticized Google for allegedly failing to preserve internal chats and abusing legal communications protections, but declined to impose formal sanctions on the company.

The U.S. Justice Department asked Mehta to penalize Google for what the government called its “systematic destruction” of employee emails and a “blatant abuse” of attorney-client privilege, which protects communications with attorneys.

Mehta said it was not necessary to rule on how Google handled the evidence to determine whether the company violated antitrust law.

“Nevertheless, the court is surprised by the lengths Google goes to avoid creating a paper trail for regulators and litigants,” Mehta wrote. Google “has trained its employees, quite effectively, not to create ‘bad’ evidence,” he said.

Google and the Justice Department declined to comment on Mehta’s decision not to sanction Google over the evidence preservation order. Google has denied violating antitrust laws and said Monday it would appeal the court’s ruling. It also denied mishandling evidence.

Google has long had a practice of automatically deleting employee chat messages after 24 hours unless the person clicked the “history on” button to keep them. Last year, it changed that policy to better protect chats.

Mehta also criticized the company for its “communicate with care” initiative, in which Google employees added lawyers to messages and marked them as “attorney-client confidential.”

The dispute over Google chat records has expanded into other cases questioning the tech company’s business practices.

Last year, a federal judge in California ruled that Google “willfully” failed to preserve crucial chat evidence in a lawsuit filed by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games.

Epic has won a lawsuit accusing Google of excessive control over the Android app market.

Later this month, a federal judge in Virginia will hear arguments about the destruction of evidence in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Google over its digital advertising practices. A non-jury trial is scheduled for next month.

Mehta said his decision not to impose sanctions on Google is not an exoneration.

“Any company that requires its employees to identify and preserve relevant evidence does so at its own risk,” Mehta wrote. “Google avoided sanctions in this case. It may not be so lucky in the next one.”