Rudy Giuliani is staring down hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and sanctions amid numerous lawsuits in addition to the new criminal charges – related to his work for Donald Trump after the 2020 election.
Your right, it’s usually when the defendant is engaging in bad faith, like purposely hiding documents. The case I remember, defendant intentionally refused to turn over a bad document and might even have destroyed it, but one of the law clerks at defendant’s firm decided to be a whistleblower. I don’t know if there’s specific precedent for this if the grounds are just I’m to broke to conduct a search, but it’s possible. It’s usually a last resort, the judge will just keep issueing fines and attorneys fees for a few months. But at some point the case needs to move forward in the interst of justice, and the judge is going to have to figure out a way to do that if Guliani won’t turn over the documents needed for the case. I doubt the “I’m too broke” excuse is going to hold up forever.
Your right, it’s usually when the defendant is engaging in bad faith, like purposely hiding documents. The case I remember, defendant intentionally refused to turn over a bad document and might even have destroyed it, but one of the law clerks at defendant’s firm decided to be a whistleblower. I don’t know if there’s specific precedent for this if the grounds are just I’m to broke to conduct a search, but it’s possible. It’s usually a last resort, the judge will just keep issueing fines and attorneys fees for a few months. But at some point the case needs to move forward in the interst of justice, and the judge is going to have to figure out a way to do that if Guliani won’t turn over the documents needed for the case. I doubt the “I’m too broke” excuse is going to hold up forever.