In This Issue:
- Supreme Court Makes It More Difficult for Judges to Impose Sizable Criminal Fines pages 1 - 2
- Does “Hidden” ESI Meet the Government’s Burden of Producing Evidence in “Reasonably Usable” Form? Or Is It Pie-in-the-Skype? pages 2 - 4
Excerpt from Supreme Court Makes It More Difficult for Judges to Impose Sizable Criminal Fines:
In its just completed term, the Supreme Court limited the power of judges to enhance criminal fines in Southern Union Co. v. United States. Southern Union Co. had been convicted for storing liquid mercury without a permit in violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (“RCRA”), a felony punishable by a fine of $50,000 for each day of the violation. The district court determined that the maximum fine was $38.1 million based on a storage period of more than two years as alleged by the indictment, but imposed a lesser fine of $6 million, plus a “community service obligation” of $12 million.
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