From the www.arma.org web site (an excellent resource on records management):
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Intel Corp. may have lost many e-mails that it is obligated to produce for a lawsuit. Advanced Micro Devices filed suit against the company for allegedly using a variety of improper tactics to maintain a monopoly in sales in the PC processor market.
Intel claims to have taken every effort to preserve the documents but failed to notify employees to retain messages related to the case and also used a system that automatically deleted emails every 35 days. The missing evidence could complicate the lawsuit and cost Intel millions of dollars in fines.
More at the Baseline Magazine website.
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We find this article interesting because we periodically hear of blanket “e-mail retention policies” that specify deleting all e-mails after a certain span of time like 30 days, 60 days, 90, etc. Such a policy ignores at least one critical theory – it is the content of the e-mail, not the fact that it IS an e-mail, that determines how long you keep it. For example, an e-mail about an HR issue is kept for a different amount of time than one about a contract dispute, which is kept for a different amount of time than one about corporate taxes. A retention policy that states “Keep e-mails no longer than six months” may not survive legal scrutiny.
An e-mail may, or may not, be defined as a “record”. But if it meets the definition of a record, it must be retained and destroyed according to some sort of retention policy…no different than a paper record.
Our unsolicited advice – run all records management policies by your legal team, including retention policies. And you might consider seeking the counsel of an attorney who is skilled in RM…as not all are.
