County ordered internal investigation in AtPac case

"Nevada County hired a consultant in early June to investigate why evidence critical to a potential multimillion dollar lawsuit was destroyed, despite an order from the county's top attorney to preserve all information pertinent to the case.

"According to a document obtained by The Union, the county approved up to $3,000 to pay SC Consulting to conduct the internal investigation.

"AtPac Inc. filed suit against the county, Clerk-Recorder Greg Diaz and Florida software firm Aptitude Solutions in Sacramento federal court in February 2010, claiming the loss of its intellectual property when Nevada County's Clerk-Recorder's office was switching software providers from AtPac to Aptitude in 2009.

"The lawsuit is ongoing, and to date, the county has spent more than $1.2 million on outside legal counsel to defend the case, which is scheduled to go to trial this fall. Oral arguments for AtPac's motion to find summary judgment in its favor — without going to trial — are scheduled for Tuesday in Sacramento.

"In April, federal Judge William Shubb sanctioned Nevada County for scrubbing — erasing all information — a computer server in October of last year. The server contained information on the transfer of county data from AtPac to Aptitude — information material to the case, according to AtPac's legal team.

"'The spoliation (destruction), combined with other deceptive discovery practices by defendants, indicates that without some sort of sanction, a fair and just resolution of the action will be impossible,' Shubb wrote in an April order issued in the case.

The rest of the article is here.

Below are two excerpts from Judge Shubb's order:

"While many other servers were virtualized and presumably scrubbed by County of Nevada, only the AS-Nevada server was owned by Aptitude, stored at County of Nevada, and used for making the transfer from AtPac’s software to Aptitude’s software. Its relevance to the dispute involving AtPac and Aptitude, and the need for treating it differently than other servers, was clear. The fact that all evidence relating to the scrubbing was concealed from plaintiff until after it took place is further indication that defendants knew the scrubbing was not appropriate. Scrubbing the server despite its potential relevance demonstrates willful ignorance or worse, not an innocent misunderstanding." 

"Defendants had an obligation to preserve the AS-Nevada server at the time it was destroyed, and they willfully destroyed it."

The only thing that The Union keeps leaving out of their stories about the County's destruction of evidence is that Judge Shubb found that the destruction of the evidence by the County was willful - willful means that the County did it intentionally. Basically, Jamison hired a consultant to inform the citizens that it was an accident...contrary to that which an impartial judge already determined. 

George Rebane has another article related to this matter and it is here.

Judge Shubbs entire order in connection with the willful destruction of relevant evidence is here.