Rarely does the Second Circuit feel impelled to delve into the
law relating to document preservation, the standards used to
quantify discovery abuses, and the appropriate sanctions for
document destruction. Such detailed jurisprudence is of course
better left to the wisdom of the trial courts, subject only to an
abuse of discretion review. Given this dynamic, practitioners and
clients alike will take notice of the Second Circuit's recent
decision in Chin v. Port Authority of New York & New Jersey,
--- F.3d ---, 2012 WL 2760776 (2d Cir. July 10, 2012), where, with
one polite sentence, the court halted the momentum of a growing
body of law holding that the failure to issue a litigation hold
notice is per se gross negligence. Instead, the Second Circuit
reasoned, lower courts should adhere to the earlier standard under
which the trial court would consider the failure to issue a
litigation hold notice as one of several factors in analyzing the
totality of the circumstances
