Posts Tagged ‘discovery’

I recently ran across a few articles on  U.K. developer CPC Group Ltd and Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Co, which is the real-estate investment arm of Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund. The decision was that Qatari Diar wrongfully backed out of a deal to redevelop London’s landmark Chelsea Barracks site after the plan was opposed by Prince Charles, a judge ruled.  

The eDiscoveryJournal, recently ran an article about desktop collection for eDiscovery and mentioned the case of Roffe v Eagle Rock, a case involving custodial self-discovery and expectations from the Judge. The transcript from the conversation between the Judge and both parties of the case can be seen here.

Reuters had an interesting article on social media policies on June 28 at:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLNE65R01920100628

The article pointed out that trying to stop employees from participating in the social media revolution is near impossible and is not the right strategy in any case. The article advocated giving employees some ground rules (via written policy) about what can be written and to always use a “professional” conduct.

Ok, I know there is a push back from the legal industry in reference to the problem of the cost of discovery. Yes, companies create, use, receive and delete huge amounts of electronic information on a daily basis and it is unreasonable to expect an organization to have enough of a handle on this moving target to be able to place an effective legal hold – quickly, and provide all responsive information in response to an eDiscovery request. But come on… organizations live and die by their information, especially electronic information and if an organization doesn’t have enough of a handle on their data to be able to place a legal hold on select data, then I’m sorry they have other problems.

In the recent case; Jones v. Bremen High School Dist. 228, 2010 WL 2106640 (N.D. Ill. May 25, 2010), one of the discovery points made in the decision was what is the appropriate legal hold process to meet an organization’s legal hold responsibilities.

I love SharePoint.  It came a long way from the first release in 2001 and a lot of organizations are now either planning or deploying SharePoint 2010.  For the last year and a half I have spoken at many events (amongst them the Microsoft Worldwide SharePoint Conference) on the need for SharePoint Governance.  While some organizations are indeed taking this seriously others are falling short in many areas to prepare themselves.  In many organizations IT will deploy SharePoint without consulting the Legal and Records Management departments and maybe this has to do with the fact that many SharePoint developers feel like they have been given the key to their own ‘SharePoint Kingdom’ and that its their project/baby.

For more information on this case, visit eDiscoverylaw.com

In the case A & M Fla. Props. II, LLC, 2010 WL 1418861 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Apr. 7, 2010), the court ordered monetary sanctions for a production delay due to the counsel’s failure to fully understand the plaintiff’s systems and retention policies.

Seven Strategies for Preventing eDiscovery from Making Your Life Miserable
How IT Professionals Can Get Ahead of the Curve

Date: Tuesday March 30, 2010
Time: 11 am PT/ 2 pm ET
Duration: One Hour

Corporate records retention policies for many companies are afterthoughts with little understanding of how the company truly uses its documents/records/ESI. In my experience, many companies leave the decision of whether to keep records and for how long to their employees. This strategy is dangerous and costly when litigation is potentially possible. Allowing your employees total control over records and ESI drives the cost of eDiscovery up because you greatly multiple the number of possible storage ares you must check for responsive records. It also increases the risk of spoliation when a litigation hold is required.

Thomas Allman recently publish an article titled: State E-Discovery Rulemaking after the 2006 Federal Amendments: An Update. In it Tom points out that 23 states have adopted statewide e-discovery procedural rules which mirror or reflect the 2006 E-Discovery Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.