Expert witness in forensic computing evidence here. Remember when the too-big-to-fail banks were bailed out to the tune of $700B USD and bank executives insist

Expert witness in forensic computing evidence here. Remember when the too-big-to-fail banks were bailed out to the tune of $700B USD and bank executives insisted they had to be paid their bonuses because their employers were contractually obligated to do so? A lot depends on who the payee is. In this case, I imagine I would argue (in an affidavit) against the CTO who admitted that there was no backup in place. Also, there was an email suggesting that the verbal contract (now confirmed in writing thanks to the exchange of email!) would be honored except for a database mishap. That's an admission of liability. The emails do not state that the (potential) plaintiff was responsible for backups. They don't say, "you were responsible for backups and you did not implement any." They simply admit there weren't any, which I would count as a failure of management to implement backups. A good labor lawyer could do a lot with this.