MR LANE Pendleton, an American with a telecommunications business here, was sued in 2005 by investment holding company Alliance Management for misrepresenting the performance and prospects of his company to induce Alliance to invest millions in it.
Unsatisfied with the documents he provided for the case, Alliance's lawyers applied successfully for the contents of his laptop to be examined.
But Mr Pendleton surrendered a different hard disk, twice, and refused to give up the real one, said court documents. Alliance's lawyers also accused him of altering some of the e-mail messages he submitted as evidence.
Justice Belinda Ang struck out his defence, and Alliance won.
Foiled by computer sleuths
WHEN Mr Duncan Merrin, the managing director of a consulting firm, told his boss he was quitting, he was asked if he was leaving for a rival firm.
He said no, so his employer Asian Corporate Services (ACS) let him serve notice while it looked around for his replacement.
But Mr Merrin was going to a competitor, and was using his notice period to talk ACS customers into switching to the firm he was joining, said the written judgment of the 2006 case.
His successor, Mr Tan Hang Song, smelled a rat when Mr Merrin kept giving him wrong customer information or none at all, and when he flatly refused to hand over his computer and all its contents.
Mr Tan called in computer forensics firm TecBiz Frisman to make a copy of the contents of Mr Merrin's computer when it was left in the office one night.
Mr Merrin erased the hard disk the next day, but the computer sleuths already had the evidence they needed, which showed what he had been up to.
Tried to wipe out evidence
DOLL designer Carter Bryant was designing the popular Bratz dolls for his next employer MGA - while still working for its rival Mattel.
When told that he would be sued, he ran a program called Evidence Eliminator on his computer to erase incriminating documents including, Mattel's lawyers alleged, e-mail messages and drawings.
His lawyers argued in the June hearing that he was simply deleting sexually explicit content and that his actions should not be revealed to the jury.
American district judge Stephen Larson did not buy it.
He added that Mr Bryant's suspiciously well-timed actions were 'relevant to his credibility as a witness'.
MGA, which was also sued, lost the case.
This story was first published in The Straits Times on 29 September 2008.
