Paying Attention to Details

This was a case of finding needles in a haystack – literally.

This civil litigation case involved a dental practice transaction dispute in excess of $1.2M.

The Seller had agreed to work in the practice for 8 months after closing.

After the Seller’s 8 month work obligation ended, the Buyer soon filed a claim, alleging that the Seller deleted “hundreds of patient records” during the agreed work period, and as a result “sabotaged” the practice value.

The Plaintiff produced over 8,000 pages of PDF documents to support its claim for damages; comprised of detailed audit and scheduling reports.

The documents identified and showed that the user ID assigned to the Seller had deleted over 800 patient records during the Seller’s 8 month work term.

At no time was this fact disputed.

To find the needles in the haystack, I transformed the Plaintiff’s PDF documents into a database for auditing purposes. (which was over 100,000 records)

I compared the date and time stamp for each of the 800+ record deletions against various email and text message times, to clearly demonstrate that the Seller could not have performed the record deletions.

The evidence was compelling and showed that each deletion occurred at a date and time when the Seller was either (i) engaged in surgery, (ii) not working in the practice or (iii) was out of town when the record deletions occurred.

The conclusion that someone else used the Defendant’s user ID to perform the record deletions.

The results of my analysis were presented to the Plaintiff just six weeks before trial.  

Two weeks before trial, the Plaintiff withdrew its claim and agreed to compensate the Seller for legal fees and damages.