He recalled a case in which 300 million e-mails were at issue. Among the e-mail chatter may be information relevant to a plaintiff s damage suit and damaging to a company s defense. If that patient survives, it will be a miracle. On the plaintiff side, lawyers must figure out what to request and how to request it in specific enough terms to get an answer, then determine if everything requested has been provided, McCormick said. Corporations and the lawyers who represent them must deal with managing massive amounts of unindexed data in the form of e-mails, backup tapes and other electronic records.
Some companies save data for years.
Others destroy it periodically. They are thinking in terms of how do I manage this business. But the realities of litigation are forcing businesses to rethink how they manage their data systems. One issue is establishing policies on what will be archived and how long it will be kept. Nesson asked to spark discussion.