Lessons from Plantronics $5 million Discovery Debacle

Earlier this month, the telephone headset company Plantronics announced it set aside $5 million in the first quarter — 2.3 percent of its projected quarterly revenue — in connection with a discovery debacle in a Delaware antitrust case.

In the Delaware case, its competitor GN Netcom sued Plantronics in 2012, accusing it of prohibiting its distributors from selling rival headsets to large call centers. For now, those antitrust accusations have taken a backseat to a federal judge’s discovery sanctions.

On July 12, U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark in Delaware sanctioned Plantronics $3 million for spoliation after determining that a senior vice president at the company deleted and told others to ...