Some companies will overwhelm you with documents during litigation. Others destroy them. Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, one of India’s large generic drugmakers, is in that second category. We know because the company was sanctioned by a federal judge for destroying more than a year’s worth of potential evidence that could have factored into patent litigation with Abbott Laboratories and Sanofi-Aventis over plans to introduce a generic version of a blood pressure med known as Tarka.

In fact, Glenmark produced just three e-mails in response to discovery requests for an entire year’s worth of material and allegedly engaged in a “systematic document destruction policy,” in which documents and e-mails were retained on company servers for only one month. The ruling, which allows a jury to draw an adverse inference, comes less than a month after Sanofi and Abbott lost a bid to prevent Glenmark from launching its generic, The American Lawyer notes.

Glenmark argued it was entitled to “work product immunity,” but US District Court Judge Dennis Cavanaugh didn’t buy that reasoning. “The destroyed documents…were relevant to the claims and defenses in the present litigation and were the subject of reasonably foreseeable litigation,” he wrote in his ruling. Sanofi and Abbott sued Glenmark for patent infringement in 2007 and sought to prevent Glenmark from selling its generic during the litigation. However, Cavanaugh earlier this month allowed Glenmark to proceed because the generic drugmaker raised “a substantial question” about the validity of the brand-name patent.