Just last week, I published this article with a colleague in BNA’s Digital Discovery & e-Evidence® regarding the implications of a recent federal court decision for common document retention policies. The article—entitled “Terminating Sanction for Destroying Files to Avoid Suit Raises Concern for Document Retention Practices”—analyzes the court’s decision Slep-Tone Entertainment v. Granito (2014 BL 4257D. Ariz., CV 12-298 TUC DCB, 01/08/14). As we observe in the article, the case exemplifies the adage “bad facts make bad law.” If restricted to its rather unusual facts, the case is of little note. But the court’s reasoning in granting summary judgment as a spoliation sanction against the defendant raises concerns for document retention policies motivated by similar objectives.

We counsel clients to significantly limit the volume of ESI they maintain for a variety of reasons. One compelling reason is to reduce litigation expense and exposure. After all, as we note in the article, the less ESI a company maintains, the less risk it produces some ‘‘smoking gun” document in unanticipated litigation and the less expense it incurs in discovery in any such litigation. Limiting ESI prospectively generally involves imposing limits on what and how much information employees can maintain. Auto-delete policies, for example, can be effective tools. Limiting ESI already on hand, however, generally requires deletion.…
Continue Reading Eliminating ESI To Reduce Litigation Expense and Exposure: Sound Policy, But Not Without Some Risk