During the Microsoft antitrust litigation, many Microsoft witnesses, including Bill Gates, found themselves confronted with and trying to explain old e-mail messages that seemingly contradicted their courtroom testimony. Such confrontations are becoming more commonplace as the discovery of e-mail becomes a routine litigation practice.
Many companies have document retention policies that establish time limits for retaining documents.
Once a record ages beyond the specified time frame, it is destroyed. Too often, however, such a document retention policy applies only to paper documents, totally ignoring the fact that in the last few years, a great deal of our communications have moved to an electronic format. E-mail messages tend to survive even when they appear to have been deleted. Even if it is deleted from the file folder, the actual message survives on the individual's computer or on the file server until another file is saved over it. Even then a fragment of it may survive if the new file isn't large enough to completely write over the old file.