March 1st, 2010 by lhaasA recent article on Law.com (part one of a seven part series) discusses the importance of legal holds for the preservation of electronically stored information (ESI) and other documents.
Why are courts placing so much emphasis on this ministerial step in preservation of issuing a written litigation hold? It appears that patience is running thin for lost ESI in federal court. More importantly, ignorance of litigation hold requirements is no excuse. Also, the days of he-said-she-said litigation hold arguments are numbered. Courts want to see a transparent and credible process by simply looking at a few documents such as the written hold notice, distribution list, follow-up interview reports or logs, as examples.
As articulated by Judge Scheindlin in Pension Committee v. Banc of America, courts definitely do not want to wade through stacks of motions papers and days of hearings to determine if preservation efforts were sufficient to prevent the destruction of ESI and other documents. As a result, it is imperative for an organization to have in place a litigation hold policy and adequate procedures necessary to avoid going down the litigation “detour” of discovery sanctions motions.
via Law.com – Step 1 for Legal Holds: Trigger Events.
