/>iIn one of the biggest anti-robocall proceedings to ate the Ohio GC is pursuing massive penalties against Aaron Michael Jones– one of the most persistent TCPA violators in history.
The guy allegedly sent over 2 billion illegal calls over a period of just a few years selling auto warranties.
The calls allegedly reached virtually every human being in America and caused unknown amounts of headache.
While the government pursues Jones it is also pursuing 8 co-defendants that allegedly participated in the scheme.
The case continues to work its way through the Ohio courts and it looks like the co-defendants may be trying to help Jones hide evidence of the crimes here.
Specifically one of the defendants– Roy Melvin Cox, Jr. — allegedly actively destroyed WhatsApp messages with an alleged co-conspirator.
Not good.
The Court took a hard look at the behavior and determined a sanction was appropriate given that many of the messages were “lost to the ether.”
Cox apparently “acknowledged he deleted WhatsApp messages with at least one co-Defendant– a “WhatsApp message log produced by another Defendant, Julie Bridge, showed Defendant Cox turned on an auto-delete.”
Eesh.
Since the messages are gone forever one can only guess at their content. And that is exactly the sanction the court plans to impose.
Usually a lawyer cannot invite improper speculation by a member of the jury, but in a situation like this–where evidence has been deleted by a party– a judge may sometimes order the jury be instructed about adverse inferences that can be drawn from destroyed evidence.
That is just what the court proposes in this case– it will allow the State of Ohio to introduce evidence of the destuction of the WhatsApp messages and then urge the jury that the messages must have contained harmful information– which is why they were deleted.
The court is going to permit the defendant to make contrary argument, however, contending that in fact the deletion owas accidental and the messages did not contain anything damaging.
The jury could theoretically believe the defense, but in a case like this the instruction and subsequent argument ill likely be extremely damaging.
We will definitely keep an eye on this one as it continues to wind its way through the court.
Will Jones be held liable for billions of unlawful calls? We shall see.
