Mobile Evidence Recovery After Encryption: Vanishing Messages, Spoliation Leverage, and the New Collection Playbook

Kelly Twigger, Founder and Principal | ESI Attorneys LLC

Kelly Twigger has spent more than two decades in electronic discovery, first as a litigator and now as national eDiscovery counsel to law firms, corporations, and municipalities on matters involving electronically stored information. She began her career at Quarles & Brady LLP in Milwaukee, where she was a litigation partner and started the firm’s first records retention and electronic discovery practice, leaving in 2009 to found ESI Attorneys LLC, a boutique eDiscovery and information law firm in Boulder, Colorado. She is also the founder and CEO of Minerva26, the curated eDiscovery case law, rules, checklists, and forms platform she built as eDiscovery Assistant and rebranded in March 2025. She is a practicing attorney, software developer, author, and speaker.

• Education & Credentials

Kelly Twigger is admitted to practice in Wisconsin and Colorado and has worked with technology in litigation practice since 1997. Her credentials were forged over more than two decades at the intersection of law and technology: she rose to litigation partner at Quarles & Brady LLP in Milwaukee, where she started the firm’s first records retention and electronic discovery practice, and she is co-author of the Electronic Discovery and Records and Information Management Guide: Rules, Checklists and Forms, published by Thomson Reuters. She has taught electronic discovery as adjunct faculty at the University of Colorado Law School and serves on the faculty of the University of Florida Law eDiscovery Conference.

• Recognition & Leadership

Named a Fastcase 50 honoree for legal innovation in 2023 and featured in the American Bar Association’s Women of Legal Tech series in 2018. Recognized in 2018 by Corporate eDiscovery as one of the voices driving the conversation in eDiscovery.

Named one of Wisconsin’s top five legal innovators by Wisconsin Lawyer in 2014 for the eDiscovery research tool she developed to put rules, case digests, templates, checklists, and glossaries in practitioners’ hands.

• Professional Involvement

Co-author of Electronic Discovery and Records and Information Management Guide: Rules, Checklists and Forms (Thomson Reuters), a work widely used in eDiscovery education. She hosts the Meet and Confer podcast, formerly Case of the Week, analyzing recent electronic discovery decisions, and has written on eDiscovery for ACEDS and Above the Law.

She has taught as adjunct faculty at the University of Colorado Law School and serves on the faculty of the University of Florida Law eDiscovery Conference, where in February 2026 she moderated Current Case Law and the Strategic Edge in eDiscovery, a session running from hyperlinked files and mobile devices to recent sanctions decisions. Her other speaking includes the Georgetown Advanced eDiscovery Institute, Relativity Fest, Legalweek, the Masters Conference, and the ASU-Arkfeld eDiscovery and Digital Evidence Conference.

• Experience

Her published case analysis runs directly to the subject matter of this program. She has written detailed analyses of FTC v. Noland, where defendants moved communications to Signal and ProtonMail one day after learning of a subpoena and the court granted an adverse inference under Rule 37(e); Hunters Capital, LLC v. City of Seattle, where officials deleted messages through factory resets and changed retention settings, and counsel imaged the phones without verifying that the capture was complete; Two Canoes LLC v. Addian Inc., where a chief executive discarded three phones without backing up WeChat messages that the platform purges from its servers within days; In re Gold King Mine Release, involving an iPad wiped before collection, an iPhone locked by a forgotten passcode, and hundreds of lost photographs; and Jones v. Riot Hospitality Group, where the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal after forensic analysis established intentional text message destruction.

She has also published on the discoverability of the litigation hold notice itself following a preliminary showing of spoliation, on text message preservation plans measured against the Rule 37(e) framework, and on Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission guidance as it meets mobile reality across text, WhatsApp, Signal, Slack, and Teams. Before founding ESI Attorneys she managed litigation at Quarles & Brady ranging from breach of contract matters to bet-the-company class actions.

Anthony M. Calvano, Partner | Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP

Anthony M. Calvano is a partner in the Wilmington office of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP and is counsel of record for the plaintiff stockholders in In re World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Merger Litigation, Consolidated C.A. No. 2023-1166-JTL, the Delaware Court of Chancery action in which the court imposed spoliation sanctions in May 2026 over the destruction of Signal messages. His firm identifies him as one of four lawyers leading that case. He litigates fiduciary duty, merger-related, and stockholder rights disputes in the Court of Chancery and the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, and he clerked for Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster, who issued the sanctions decision.

• Education & Credentials

Notre Dame Law School, J.D., magna cum laude, 2016, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law and was a Dean’s Circle Fellow. DeSales University, summa cum laude, 2013. Admitted in Delaware and before the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.
Judicial law clerk to the Honorable Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster, Delaware Court of Chancery.

• Recognition & Leadership

Named to the 2026 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers for securities and corporate governance litigation.

He joined Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann as a partner in January 2026 from Ross Aronstam & Moritz, and previously practiced at Richards, Layton & Finger.

• Professional Involvement

He appears on the record in all three of Delaware’s business litigation forums: the Court of Chancery, the Complex Commercial Litigation Division of the Superior Court, and the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.

His practice has run from the company and defense side to the stockholder side. He represented Coinbase, Inc. in the District of Delaware and AMCI Group, LLC in an information-access dispute in the Court of Chancery before joining Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann to litigate on behalf of stockholders.
At Notre Dame Law School he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law, introducing Volume 6 in 2016, and was a Dean’s Circle Fellow.

• Experience

In In re World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Merger Litigation, the Court of Chancery found that defendants had acted at a minimum recklessly in destroying Signal messages after receiving two litigation holds, one of which expressly directed recipients to ensure that automatic deletion protocols did not destroy relevant documents. Forensic examination of seized iPhone and iPad devices recovered chat creation dates, participants, and changes to retention settings even though the message content itself was unrecoverable. The court presumed five facts true against the two principal defendants and required them to rebut those facts by clear and convincing evidence rather than a preponderance. A settlement was submitted to the court in August 2026.

He appeared as counsel in Kundrun v. AMCI Group, LLC, C.A. No. 2025-0570-LM, an information-access dispute in a deadlocked two-member limited liability company, at oral argument before Vice Chancellor Laster in October 2025. In Dalby v. Kastner, C.A. No. 2025-0136-NAC, the Court of Chancery held in August 2025 that his clients’ removal for cause was invalid and that the company had breached the terms of a convertible note. He was on the trial team that secured a directed verdict after an eight-day jury trial in Venator Materials PLC v. Tronox Limited, C.A. No. N19C-05-117-EMD, in the Complex Commercial Litigation Division of the Delaware Superior Court, defeating $75 million in claims and a $400 million counterclaim arising from an agreement concerning the sale of a titanium dioxide facility.

Melinda Redenius, Forensic Consultant | Veracity Forensics LLC

Melinda Redenius brings more than a decade of experience in digital forensics, e-discovery, and litigation support, with core expertise in digital evidence acquisition and mobile device forensics. She is a forensic consultant at Veracity Forensics LLC and writes on mobile and cloud forensic methodology, including how extraction methods are selected and what documentation makes a collection defensible. Her earlier career includes twelve years at the Denver digital forensics firm Forensic Pursuit, where she served as Chief Business Officer, and a subsequent role as Associate Director of Digital Forensics and E-Discovery at ArcherHall following that firm’s acquisition of Forensic Pursuit. She reports extensive courtroom and deposition experience supporting matters in both state and federal courts.

• Education & Credentials

Melinda Redenius built her forensic qualifications across more than a decade of casework in digital evidence acquisition, mobile device forensics, complex data analysis, and expert reporting, with evidence handling and forensic operations spanning multiple jurisdictions. Her professional formation runs through roles as a forensic analyst, business owner, and senior leader within global forensic and technology organizations, including twelve years at the digital forensics firm Forensic Pursuit and a subsequent post as Associate Director of Digital Forensics and E-Discovery at ArcherHall. She practices at Veracity Forensics LLC, which is licensed by the States of Texas and Michigan to perform investigations.

• Recognition & Leadership

She has held roles ranging from forensic analyst and business owner to senior leadership positions within global forensic and technology organizations, including Chief Business Officer of Forensic Pursuit, which was named a top digital forensics consulting and services company by Enterprise Security Magazine in 2019 during her tenure there.

She serves as a board member of the Southern Plains Land Trust.

• Professional Involvement

She writes industry articles on forensic practice, including A Case-Driven Approach to Mobile and Cloud Forensics in January 2026 and Tales From the Trenches: Spot the Spoof in April 2026, and has published on the discovery consequences of data accumulation and on artificial intelligence as an evidentiary problem.

She served on a panel addressing smartphones in investigations and litigation at the Masters Conference in Denver in June 2025, presented Computer Forensics Basics to the Colorado Chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in May 2019, and appeared on the AI on Trial webinar panel in April 2026.

• Experience

Her published methodology work sets out a tool-agnostic approach to mobile collection, selecting among full physical extraction, file system extraction, advanced logical extraction, standard logical extraction, remote targeted collection, and cloud data collection according to device type, operating system, security posture, and proportionality under the procedural rules. She identifies Cellebrite for complex mobile extractions and advanced iOS and Android acquisitions, Oxygen Forensic Detective for logical and backup-based acquisitions and for cloud preservation from iCloud, Google, and social platforms, and Magnet AXIOM for multi-source evidence correlation, and treats transparent documentation of methodology as the basis of defensibility.

Her core expertise covers digital evidence acquisition, mobile device forensics, complex data analysis, and expert reporting, together with evidence handling and forensic operations across multiple jurisdictions. She has also written on forensic recovery from sources beyond phones and cloud accounts, including vehicles, wearables, gaming systems, and Internet of Things devices, and on translating technical findings into narratives that hold up for legal, regulatory, and executive audiences.

Mark T.J. Jones, Partner | Crawford Wishnew Lang PLLC

Mark T.J. Jones is a partner at Crawford Wishnew Lang PLLC in Dallas, where he prosecutes and defends complex commercial claims including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, business divorce, and fraud, and represents companies and individuals in employment matters with extensive experience on both sides of non-compete and non-solicitation covenants. He handles depositions and complex motion practice, and within his first two years of practice led closing arguments in a multi-million-dollar telecommunications matter and sat second chair in a nationally covered jury trial that returned a substantial verdict including punitive damages.

• Education & Credentials

Baylor Law School, J.D., 2015, including the rigorous Baylor Law Practice Court Program; undergraduate study at Baylor University. Admitted in Texas in 2015 and before the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas in 2018.

• Recognition & Leadership

Named to D Magazine’s Best Lawyers Under 40 in Dallas for 2024, 2025, and 2026; selected to Texas Rising Stars from 2019 through 2025 and to Texas Super Lawyers in 2026.

In law school he served as 3L Student Bar Association President, earned the Beckworth, Hollingsworth and Stephens Trial Advocacy Award and the Fraley & Fraley Mock Trial Award, won an NTC Regional Championship in mock trial, and advanced as a quarterfinalist advocate in the TYLA National Trial Competition.

• Professional Involvement

He is active in the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers and a member of its 2017 Leadership Class, the Transition to Law Program, and the American Inns of Court–ABOTA Trial Academy, and is a member of the Dallas Bar Association. He volunteers as an affiliate professor at the UNT Dallas College of Law.

• Experience

He sat second chair with Dave Wishnew in Andrea Polito and Andrea Polito Photography, Inc. v. Moldovan, Cause No. DC-15-03069 in the 134th Judicial District Court of Dallas County, where in the summer of 2017 a jury found statements about a wedding photographer false and malicious and returned a verdict of approximately $1.08 million on claims for defamation, business disparagement, and civil conspiracy, including $200,000 in punitive damages. The case drew national and international press coverage, and the trial court’s denial of the defendants’ motion to dismiss under the Texas Citizens Participation Act was affirmed on interlocutory appeal in Moldovan v. Polito, No. 05-15-01052-CV (Tex. App.—Dallas Aug. 2, 2016).

SESSION 1 – Ephemeral Messaging Spoliation: Litigation Holds and Sanctions Leverage After the WWE Ruling | 12:00pm – 1:00pm

Courts and regulators increasingly treat the deliberate use of auto-delete features on Signal, WhatsApp, and similar apps as sanctionable spoliation. This session explains how Rule 37(e)’s two-tier framework applies to ephemeral messaging losses, when courts impose adverse inferences or shift the burden of proof, and how to draft litigation holds that hold up under current judicial scrutiny. Attendees leave with a practical checklist for issuing holds, verifying custodian compliance, and preserving auto-delete configuration settings as independent evidence of spoliation intent.

BREAK | 1:00pm – 1:10pm

SESSION 2 – Collecting Text and Chat Evidence When Providers Cannot Produce Content | 1:10pm – 2:10pm

Encryption has closed most paths to getting message content directly from providers. This session covers what each major platform actually produces under legal process, how device-side forensic extraction works and where it fails, how the Fifth Amendment circuit split limits compelled device access, and which collection methods deliver results when the provider produces nothing. Attendees leave with a working framework for building an evidence collection strategy around provider-side encryption barriers.