ip: do you use an electronic shreader?

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

E-MAIL ARCHIVES CREATE LEGAL BURDEN
With untold billions of e-mail messages stored on tapes and disk drives in
companies and organizations throughout the country, legal experts now say
that the electronic discovery process in lawsuits is now becoming a
mini-industry, with the threat of having to pay the expense of delving into
mountains of e-mail archives now acting as a catalyst for settling many
commercial cases rather than defending them.  "On one hard drive that takes
up 10 square inches, you can store more than you can store on the whole
floor of a building," says the CEO of Electronic Evidence Discovery, a
company that provides computer support to parties in litigation.  "Just the
threat of conducting electronic discovery is a very powerful negotiation
tool."  Some judges have dealt with the issue by placing the burden of the
search on the plaintiff, but this raises another problem -- most defendants
don't want someone who's in the process of suing them poking around in their
computer files.  Judge Paul Niemeyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals in
Baltimore is engaged in a national effort to re-examine the federal rules
governing electronic discovery:  "I sense that discovery is being used as a
tool of oppression, rather than as a tool of fairness."  (Miami Herald 1
May 97)