US Judge James Donato says he will investigate Google. The judge leading the case between Google and Epic Games will do so because of chat messages that Google intentionally destroyed, when they were potential evidence.

During the hearing in the lawsuit between Google and Epic Games, the judge said that he would investigate the issue surrounding the deleted chat messages. Which Writes the edge, who was present at the trial. Donato described Google’s behavior as a “direct attack on the fair administration of justice.” “I will find out who is responsible,” Donato said.

The judge added: “It undermines due process. It raises doubts about the fair resolution of legal disputes. It is inconsistent with our system.” Donato said he will investigate these matters “on his own” and outside of the epic lawsuit.

However, the judge will not impose “mandatory inference instructions” on the jury deciding the case between Epic and Google. If that had happened, the jury would have been obligated to take into account in its ruling that Google had destroyed potential evidence for the trial. In this case, the jury should also have assumed that this evidence would have incriminated Google.

Instead, a “lenient” jury instruction is imposed, which allows the jury to conclude that the missing evidence could have incriminated Google and could have helped Epic. “Ideally, the jury decides whether or not to make a conclusion. I would not restrict the jury’s discretion by drawing that conclusion for them,” he said. Google declined to respond to The Verge’s questions about Judge Donato’s comments.

During the lawsuit between Google and Epic Games, it was revealed that Google automatically deleted chat conversations via the auto-delete option. Employees, even the CEO, deliberately used this function to hide some conversations. Several employees said that they did not turn off the auto-delete function, even after working with a file Legal contract They were required to preserve potential evidence. CEO Pichai also admitted, among other employees, that he marked some documents as legally confidential to keep them out of the hands of others. Tweakers recently wrote a backstory on the lawsuit between Google and Epic.