"At the September 15 hearing, Judge Anderson pressed Google to explain how it could have permitted what the court termed an egregious and very significant problem in this case: I'm not understanding how this could happen with what should have been at least two levels of oversight. (9/15/23 DOJ Action Tr. at 52, 54, 59.) As the Court noted: You produced how many documents since the filing of this lawsuit? 1 million. So you're talking about potentially five times what you've produced, and you're saying you thought there was substantial completion done? Its false. It wasnt; was it? (Id. at 55.)
After hearing from Google's counsel, the court stated, It's no excuse and Maybe it wasn't malicious, maybe it wasn't in bad faith, but it clearly was not being done under proper supervision, either internally or externally. And you've put everyone in an unfortunate situation by your failure to do that. (Id. at 56, 58.) The Court appeared further concerned about the delay in jumping on this issue sooner: You've known about this for a month now. You knew about it starting on August 18th. You knew there was a real issue. There didn't seem to be a call to arms then. The first time I heard about it was September 1, and it was this, you know, like, whoops, we've got a problem. It wasn't as clear as I now know how egregious this is. (Id. at 59.)"
After hearing from Google's counsel, the court stated, It's no excuse and Maybe it wasn't malicious, maybe it wasn't in bad faith, but it clearly was not being done under proper supervision, either internally or externally. And you've put everyone in an unfortunate situation by your failure to do that. (Id. at 56, 58.) The Court appeared further concerned about the delay in jumping on this issue sooner: You've known about this for a month now. You knew about it starting on August 18th. You knew there was a real issue. There didn't seem to be a call to arms then. The first time I heard about it was September 1, and it was this, you know, like, whoops, we've got a problem. It wasn't as clear as I now know how egregious this is. (Id. at 59.)"