Did computer problems doom company's case?

Companies are often required to preserve a lot of electronic documents before going to court. And deleting that information can often cause big legal problems.
A surgical resident sued her employer for gender discrimination. She complained to hospital officials that she was being treated unfairly because of her gender; shortly after, she was told her contract wasn’t being renewed, because of performance problems.
The main dispute centers around a negative performance review. According to the company, the review was completed before the resident’s bias complaint, as shown by the date on an electronic copy of the document.
However, the employee claimed the hospital wrote the review after the complaint as an excuse to let her go, and then backdated the file.
Court-appointed tech experts examined a copy of the file, but saw no evidence the employer had tampered with the data. The employee then asked the court to obtain the hard drive from her supervisor’s computer, and the court agreed. However, the hospital claimed the drive was reformatted and erased because ti crashed.
That sealed her case, the employee argued. Why? By destroying the electronic evidence, the hospital showed it was guilty.
After a jury ruled for the hospital, she asked the court to open a new trial and tell the jury the employer intentionally got rid of evidence. The court disagreed, though. There was no reason to believe the reformatting was intentional, especially after the hospital already turned over the file in question.
Cite: Paylan v. St. Mary’s Hospital Corp.