Fla. Federal Magistrate Judge Refuses to Impose Discovery Sanctions on Abilify Maker

PENSACOLA, Fla. — A Florida federal magistrate judge in the Abilify multidistrict litigation has refused to impose sanctions on a defendant for deleting emails from 2002 to 2006, finding it could not have anticipated litigation that early.

In an Oct. 5 order, Magistrate Judge Gary R. Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida further held that the drug maker had no regulatory duty to preserve the emails. Food and Drug Administration regulations do not create a duty to preserve for purposes of a spoliation motion, the judge explained, because the obligation runs to the …