You Spoiled It. Motorola, Inc., fired its CFO, Paul Liska, in January for a number of reasons related to his performance as stated by Motorola. Liska has filed a suit against Motorola for the conditions of his dismissal. Motorola accused its former CFO of destroying evidence needed in the case and asked the Cook County Circuit court to sanction Mr. Liska for "spoliation" of evidence in the case. When he was fired on January 29, Mr. Liska left the company with his company laptop, and when he returned his laptop on February 17, the laptop had been "wiped." Motorola's forensic investigators had found that a data destruction program was run on the laptop numerous times to destroy any usable data needed by Motorola to show what Mr. Liska had been working on prior to his dismissal. Mr. Liska states that he only deleted personal files.

a. Do you believe that all files related to the case have been destroyed?

b. Are there any other places that work files related to the CFO's accounting activities would be kept?

c. What would have to been done to files collected from a source other than Mr. Liska's laptop?

d. Would these files be acceptable in a courtroom case?