The Legal Battle Between IBM Israel and ICL Escalates

The ongoing legal battle between Tel Aviv-headquartered Israel Chemicals Ltd. (ICL) and IBM Israel has shifted gears. In December 2018, ICL alleged that a project it commissioned from the tech company in 2012 caused it $300 million in damages. IBM contested the claims, filing a countersuit. On Sunday, ICL filed a petition with Tel Aviv district court, asking that an expert be appointed to restore IBM’s servers, which contained email accounts used for correspondence between the two companies regarding the uniform information system ICL commissioned.

In Sunday’s filing, ICL stated that it had learned that IBM deleted the email accounts of the project managers and other senior IBM executives involved, and claimed that it could not restore the accounts. ICL labeled the move destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice. ICL further said it was told the accounts of most key personnel involved in the project were irreversibly deleted, and that the accounts that were still available do not necessarily hold all sent and received emails.

ICL attempted to solve the matter for a year before filing the 2018 lawsuit. According to Sunday’s filing, ICL received a letter from a legal representative of IBM in January 2018, stating that the former is required to keep all documents that could be relevant to its allegations or IBM’s legal defense. The company was instructed to “take any action to prevent the deletion, destruction, or loss” of those documents. In the same letter, IBM’s lawyers stated that ICL was “required without delay” to instruct all its employees to safeguard all physical and electronic copies, including those on their personal computers. The lawyers specified that the instruction applied to email exchanges.

In Sunday’s filing, ICL stated that on June 25, the two companies reached an agreement that the span of documents included in the process will be restricted to email exchanges between key project personnel. The sides exchanged their lists of key personnel at the beginning of August. According to ICL, IBM said it needed time to check whether the email accounts of its employees were kept, and if not, whether they could be restored. In November, IBM told ICL that most of the accounts were deleted and could not be restored. At the time, IBM said the accounts were deleted because the aforementioned people were no longer employed at the company, or were contracted on a temporary basis for the project and have since moved on.

ICL called IBM’s statements bizarre and unlikely, as current technology enables the restoration of deleted email accounts, “especially” for a tech company like IBM. Regardless of the reason behind IBM’s decision to delete the accounts, ICL said, it is wrongful conduct that sheds light on IBM’s behavior throughout the incomplete project.

A spokesman for IBM told Calcalist that as the matter is currently being handled in court, the company will not comment in public but respond in court.

This article has been updated with IBM's comment.