“Apple Inc.’s failure to produce e- mails from Steve Jobs and other senior executives in violation of a court order in a privacy lawsuit was a ‘mistake,’ a lawyer for the company told a judge,” Joel Rosenblatt reports for Bloomberg.

“Attorney Ashlie Beringer made the admission in a hearing today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal in San Jose, California, in a lawsuit alleging the company collected data on the geographical locations of customers through applications on mobile devices including iPhones and iPads even after they said they didn’t want to share the information,” Rosenblatt reports. “Beringer said she and her team of lawyers reviewed more than 8,000 e-mails over the weekend and determined that it should turn over messages involving Apple’s late co-founder Jobs, marketing chief Phil Schiller and former mobile software head Scott Forstall, among others. ‘If you’re not a hide-the-ball kind of person and your client isn’t a hide-the-ball company, why are we sitting here in March talking about compliance’ with a November court order? Grewal asked Beringer.”

Rosenblatt reports, “The judge cut Beringer off when she began explaining that lawyers initially made a ‘reasonable and diligent’ effort to comply with his order governing the exchange of information.”

Read more in the full article here.

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