City of Phoenix
OFFICE OF THE CITY ATTORNEY
To: Recipient List Date: March 31, 2009From: Gary Verburg, City AttorneySubject:
Litigation Hold for Preservation of Documents Regarding:“Pataky 2” - Domestic dispute DR 2008-70443140
A claim was filed on March 18, 2009, against the City of Phoenix arising out of the service of anallegedly retaliatory search warrant served on Jeff Pataky on March 9, 2009. Mr. Pataky allegesthat the search warrant actually was in response to critical comments he made about the PhoenixPolice Department on badphoenixcops.com; that the retaliatory search warrant was falselyobtained and constituted a violation of his constitutional rights; and, that items were removedwhich were not covered by the search warrant. These complaints, for ease of reference, arereferred to as “Pataky 2.”
The City of Phoenix, its officers, agents, and employees, are under a legal obligation topreserve all information potentially relevant to the issues raised in Pataky 2
. By thismemorandum, I direct all recipients listed in Exhibit “A” to immediately preserve and protectsuch information. This information may currently be stored on computer systems as electronicfiles, e-mails, or otherwise stored as hard copies or in some other tangible form.
Theobligations under this litigation hold are continuing and apply equally to informationcreated after, as well as before, this memorandum was delivered.
I have designated Stephen J. Craig as the attorney responsible for coordinating this litigationhold. Please contact him at (602) 262-6765 if you have any questions or if you believe that thelist of Key Personnel needs to be expanded to include others.This litigation hold will be followed by a Custodian Questionnaire that will ask you to morespecifically identify the type, location, and amount of potentially relevant information in yourpossession, custody, or control. Until then, and in addition to the above:
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Key Personnel are instructed to identify places where potentially relevant electronicinformation may be stored and to make appropriate arrangements for its preservation.
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Key Personnel are instructed to identify places where potentially paper documents andfiles, and other tangible material may be stored and to make appropriate arrangementsfor its preservation.
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Key Personnel must preserve the departmental reports and case files, the PSB file, andany MCAO files in the City’s possession, custody, or control.
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Key Personnel may also have the ability to save ESI to workstations and other storagemedia. Accordingly, all personnel are instructed to defer running compression, disk defragmentation or other computer optimization or automated maintenance programs,and to reasonably safeguard and preserve portable or removable electronic storage mediacontaining potentially relevant ESI.
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