Carol:

Wouldn't the IBM administrative assistant have been keeping every
document because there was a hold on records destruction and -not-
because it is a good idea to retain all documents for use in potential
future litigation? 

And isn't one major benefit of a records management program the fact
that records destruction can be justified in a court of law? 

Ryan Speer
Records Management Analyst
Georgia Archives 
5800 Jonesboro Road 
Morrow, GA 3026
678.364.3798


-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Carol E.B. Choksy, Ph.D., CRM
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 7:32 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What is a Record?

Dear Colleagues:

My opinion only. I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV, but I
spend a lot of time with General Counsels of Fortune 500 companies these
days.

This problem is actually a confusion. For litigation purposes, how a
company or a jurisdiction defines a record is irrelevant. The rules of
evidence do not focus on "records," but on "documents" and other related
materials. Drafts, post-it notes, emails harrassing other employees are
all examples of things that are fair game for a litigation subpoena. The
fact that the "documents" are not "records" is of no consequence to the
case, unless this is a part of the equation that makes up the case.

I remember speaking to a woman who had been an administrative assistant
while IBM was going through its antitrust case. She told me that she had
a box under her desk where every document went, regardless of its status
within the corporation. This included notes written on notepads. The
only thing that went in the trash was food waste.

<snip>

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