| News & Articles |
| |  | | NEW FEDERAL RULES CONCERNING ELECTRONIC DATA Another in the Smart StartSM Series. Companies doing business within the United States and its territories will need to do a better job of keeping track of where they store e-mails, computer-aided drawings, instant messages and other forms of electronic documents as a result of changes to the federal rules concerning discovery that took effect today. The U.S. Supreme Court’s administrative arm amended the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to require parties involved in federal litigation to produce “electronically stored information” to the opposing party much earlier in the litigation than before in an attempt to reduce disputes over discovery. Discovery is a phase in litigation where the parties disclose information to the other side that could be used as evidence at a trial. The new rules make it more important for businesses to know what information they have stored electronically, where it is stored, and how to recover or restore the data. This knowledge is critical because one new provision requires lawyers to provide information about where their client’s data are stored and how accessible it is early in the litigation. Under the new rules, an employee or contractor who fails to keep inventory of data, routinely copies over data, or obliterates data after litigation has commenced could be committing “electronic shredding” of evidence. Companies are still permitted to routinely purge their archives if data are not relevant to the case in litigation (or expected to litigate), though specific business such as financial service providers remain governed by other data-retention rules. The new rules do not alter how data should be retained. Rather, the rules require that measures be implemented to better inventory data stored on a system so that it can be more easily found and produced. The new rules also provide better guidance on how electronic evidence is to be handled in federal litigation, including guidelines on how companies can seek exemptions from providing data that is not “reasonably accessible.” Click here to see the specific rules. For more information on how the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on discovery could impact your business, feel free to contact Barry Kane by email at bkane@kaneplc.com, or by telephone by calling 616.725.5905. | 
