Sent to you by pakurilecz via Google Reader: Deleting E-messages Too
Soon via Wright's Legal Beagle by Ben Wright on 9/24/08 The Law of
Spoliation and Obstruction of Justice
In enterprise records administration one philosophy says employees
should be expected to examine each of their e-mail, instant and text
communications and make records retention decisions. Under this
philosophy, the decisions are 1. do we keep this communication or allow
our computer system to destroy it quickly, and 2. if we do keep this
communication, which retention category do we keep it in, A, B or C?
I'll call this the make-a-decision philosophy.

As a general rule, I am skeptical of the make-a-decision philosophy.
The reason is that – in our digital world – few employees have the
time, skills or disposition to make good decisions. The number of
digital messages touching employees grows and grows and grows. It will
continue to grow rapidly.

Court cases show the legal system penalizing organizations for deleting
records too early under the make-a-decision philosophy.

Arthur Andersen's written records policy directed its staff to make
lots of records decisions (keep this record, destroy that record). But
Andersen's accountants were pre-occupied with their regular duties, so
they procrastinated about making decisions with respect to records
related to their client named Enron. In other words, the computer age
had overwhelmed Andersen's staff with too many e-mails, faxes and paper
documents. Therefore, they amassed a backlog of records . . . records
for which decisions were required under the written policy. Then, when
Enron approached disaster, AA's staff debated about what to do with
this backlog. They debated about how to interpret their record
retention policy in this unanticipated state of affairs, and then (with
the involvement of an experienced in-house lawyer) they made decisions
that later appeared to be sinister. . . . Read more
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