Legal Holds and Trigger Events

Technology Counsel, Mary Mack of FIOS, Cuts to the Chase on Pension Committee and Rimkus

 
Dueling Opinions: Scheindlin’s Pension Committee vs. Rosenthal’s Rimkus

Originally posted by Mary Mack on March 18th, 2010: 

The new decade has begun with conflicting and complementary opinions from Judge Rosenthal of Texas and Judge Scheindlin of New York. These opinions, penned by United States District Court judges, will frame the behavior and motion practice around federal e-discovery sanctions into the near future.

Before the ink was dry on Judge Scheindlin’s groundbreaking “no written legal hold = gross negligence” opinion in The Pension Committee of the University of Montreal Pension Plan, et al. v. Banc of America Securities, et al., 2010 WL 184312 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 15, 2010) (Amended Order), subtitled “Zubulake Revisited: Six Years Later,” Judge Rosenthal, in Rimkus v. Cammarata, 07-cv-00405 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 19, 2010) drew careful lines around the court’s inherent power to sanction, even in the face of bad faith, and introduced the concept of preservation proportionality. Both opinions are available at the end of this article.

Alltop Internet Aggregator Adds Legal Hold Page

Alltop, the newest tool on the internet for following news about topics of interest has added a legal hold page available here.  Alltop is now in its third version and has over 700 topics.  It is a great tool for following some of the best known news and blogs on the internet.  If you are responsible for legal holds for your organization be sure to add our site and Alltop to your favorites.  We have added the Alltop link to our links on the right. 

Litigation Hold Round Table Held at ABA TechShow With Patrick Oot and Craig Ball

Here is a great post about the ABA Techshow this past April, 2009.  Verizon lawyer Patrick Ott and e-discovery lawyer and thought leader Craig Ball took litigation hold questions from the audience and invited members of the audience to present specific litigation hold issues to the group for discussion.  The session appears to have been invaluable based on the blog post from ediscoveryinfo.

Some quick highlights:

Patrick Oot explained that Verizon built an internal legal hold solution, mostly because it has programmers on staff and it had simlar notification system in place.

Craig Ball quized the audience about litigation hold headaches.  The chief complaint; lack of complaince and overly broad scope of the materials to be preserved.  Craig then had an insightful comment to close the session:

I consider preservation letters a gift because it gives me insight into the other side’s real intention. If it says “save all the metadata,” then I know they are an ignoramous. But if they are specific in their request, then I know that I have to have my ducks in a row because they know exactly what they’re doing.

To read the original blog post, click here.