Litigation Hold

Avoid heavy fines for destruction of evidence.

Perhaps the most serious requirement for email archiving is the obligation to preserve evidence, which is often called “litigation hold.” Organizations are obligated to make a “good faith effort” to prevent any evidence from being destroyed if litigation is “reasonably foreseeable.” Some good indicators that a litigation hold is required are as follows:

• A formal complaint, subpoena, or notification of a lawsuit is received.
• Somebody threatens litigation, even verbally by saying, “I am going to sue.”
• A regulatory or governmental body starts an investigation.
• An attorney or third-party investigator requests facts related to an incident or dispute.
• An incident takes place that results in injury.
• An employee makes a formal complaint to management, especially when related to personnel issues.

The courts tend to be kinder to organizations that make a good faith effort to preserve data via litigation hold. The committee that wrote the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, specifically states:

“Among the factors that bear on a party’s good faith in (placing a litigation hold) are the steps the party took to comply with a court order in the case or party agreement requiring preservation of specific electronically stored information.”

The InBoxer Anti-Risk Appliance makes it easy to place a litigation hold on a single document or a group of documents. The result of any search can be tagged and placed in a group of documents that you name. You may create an unlimited number of document groups and place any number of documents in each group. Groups of documents can be placed on litigation hold with a single click.

Because any document can be placed in more than one group, you never have to worry about a document being removed from litigation hold because a different case is closed.

InBoxer makes it easy to create and manage litigation hold in a way that can satisfy your good faith requirements.