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Sent to you by pakurilecz via Google Reader: Exculpatory Electronic
Mail via Electronic Data Records Law | How to Win E-Discovery by
Benjamin Wright on 1/12/09
Should Corporate Executives Prefer Early Deletion of E-Records?

Some executives fear that e-mail will come back to haunt them, so they
minimize their use of it. And they want corporate e-mail destroyed
quickly.

But electronic records came to the rescue of David Stockman, former CEO
of bankrupt auto parts maker Collins & Aikman. Stockman and other
executives were indicted by prosecutors for alleged lying about the
company’s financial condition. Prosecutors apparently based the charges
on an investigation by an outside law firm working on behalf the
company’s board of directors.

Stockman and his co-defendants maintained that they were victims of a
rush to justice. They said the law firm and the prosecutors failed to
examine all the complex evidence carefully. They and the government
undertook to assemble a database containing 10 million company records,
including . . .
(no doubt) copious e-mail records.
 From this database, the defendants drew evidence to support their side
of the story.

Eventually the defense prevailed. In an unusual move, the prosecutors
withdrew the charges, stating that they had come to reassess the
evidence in the case.

In other words, the executives were fortunate that the company retained
so many records like e-mail.

In a putative corporate scandal, the relevant e-mail records can be
maddingly plentiful. A large number of computer-based records is
unsurprising in a modern white collar crime investigation.

In this case, the defendants' legal team patiently mined the company’s
e-mail (and other records) to build a convincing case that prosecution
was unwarranted.

(David Stockman is most famous as the Ronald Reagan’s budget director
in the 1980s.)

–Benjamin Wright

Mr. Wright is an advisor to Messaging Architects, thought leader in
enterprise records management.

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