I read this thread with some interest yesterday.  Everyone here knows 
I'm of the opinion that there are few legal barriers to the use of 
electronic technologies, including imaging.  However, the legal 
permissioning is based upon the ability of the technology to accurately 
reproduce and store the data.  The operant word here is 'accurately.'  A 
few years ago, someone on this August List noted, in the context of OCR 
errors, that a 10 digit number that has a single erroneous digit isn't 
90% right, it's 100% wrong.  I could not agree more, and I am confident 
that anybody with arithmetic in their background will agree.  Therefore, 
a technology that switches digits isn't accurately reproducing the record.

If someone's been using it to batch process accounting records or 
engineering documents or some other number-intensive doc type, there 
could be one hell of a problem from an admissibility and legal 
compliance standpoint, particularly if they've destroyed the originals 
(leaving aside the other potentially catastrophic consequences of bad 
numbers in things like engineering docs).  A smart lawyer could 
legitimately challenge their admissibility in court, and a tax auditor 
could easily disallow them in an audit, should they become aware of the 
software issue.  Even if you've still got the originals, going back and 
doing a QC check of a zillion original AP invoices will be a formidable 
proposition, to say the least.  There are going to be a lot of 6's and 
8's that could have got transposed in there, not to mention 1's and 7's, 
3's and 8's and so on.

Were I to find myself in that situation, I'd be suing the bejasus out 
out of the manufacturer, limitation of liability be damned.  A 
high-profile, very public row over that proven fact that their software 
introduces fatal errors into scanned data is likely to force a rapid 
settlement.  I don't think their lawyers and marketing folks would 
relish the prospect of asserting a defense to the effect that "Yes, our 
software does in fact introduce catastrophic errors in the data, but 
it's not our problem. Tough."  And that's the defense they'd  be asserting.


-- 
Best regards,

John
John Montaña
Montaña & Associates
29 Parsons Road
Landenberg Pennsylvania 19350
610-255-1588
484-653-8422 mobile
[log in to unmask]
www.montana-associates.com
twitter: @johncmontana




List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message.
mailto:[log in to unmask]