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Destruction Of Documents Before Proceedings Commence: What Is A Court To Do?, Camille Cameron, Jonathan Liberman
Destruction Of Documents Before Proceedings Commence: What Is A Court To Do?, Camille Cameron, Jonathan Liberman
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The effective performance by courts of their adjudicative role depends on the availability of relevant evidence. In civil proceedings, the discovery process aims to ensure that such evidence is available. If documents that would be relevant evidence in a trial are destroyed, a fair adjudication is made difficult, if not impossible. This is so whether the destruction of documents occurs before or after proceedings commence. This article asks what a trial judge should do in a situation where relevant evidence is unavailable because one of the parties has destroyed documents before the proceedings commenced but anticipating that such proceedings were …