[Macworld]

Post your comments for Psystar case reveals Apple's shaky e-mail retention policy here

[mdawson]

I have yet to work for a single company or institution that had an e-mail retention policy. I have also never heard from any friends or associates working for any company, institution or organization ever mention that they were obliged to retain e-mail. If anything, I more often than not here the exact opposite of people attempting to get rid of old e-mails taking up allocated server space.

I find therefore find this anonymous e-discovery lawyer?s position to be just another case of changing the rules because Apple is involved. I personally have seen no evidence of a trend of companies requiring people to retain corporate e-mails. It is one thing to mention that many corporations do not have an e-mail retention policy, including Apple, but it is irresponsible, if not indicative of an anti-Apple bias, to make such as statement as if Apple is some sole holdout on implementing such a policy.

[ibeetle]

Hey, they got Time Machine. :0)

Seriously though, you are completely right mdawson. My dad is a corporate attorney he does not have a e-mail retention policy for his law firm. I worked for a Japanese playing card company ;0) they did not have a e-mail retention policy at the time... I do not know about now. My brother has worked for American Express, Countywide, and AIG and they either do not have one or it is so vague that it is unusable.

The e-mail retention policy of most CEO's seems to be... do not use e-mail, and if you get a e-mail delate it.

[Bruce_Star_Guy]

I worked for a large company that had a document retention policy. I think we were covered on it yearly. I think that they tried to enforce it by giving us tiny little mail boxes on the server.
It seems to me that the policy was designed more to make sure that documents were deleted in a timely manner rather than keeping them for any possible discovery action.
Me, I'm a pack rat, so I kept just about everything. I was told by a lawyer at work that I'd be ok, as long as I didn't show any prejudice in documents I kept or deleted. It looks bad if you have every email about having lunch from a given time period, but none of the details of a project that you were working on at that time. It kind of makes it look like you went back into the archive and deleted stuff that they asked for in discovery.

[gshake]

A year or two ago our company required us to tag all email with both a Legal Entity and Security Classification (Non-classified, INTERNAL, PROPRIETARY, PRIVATE, RESTRICTED). If you don't tag it, you can't send it. However, there's nothing preventing us from deleting our emails no matter how they're tagged. This doesn't mean IT hasn't archived every email I've sent/received somewhere and just hasn't told us about it.

[javaman]

While I don't think that Macworld has an "anti-Apple bias", after reading the linked "Storage on Trial" article, I do have to agree that this story seems pretty weak. Here's why:
1) The linked article only referred to two specific cases (Morgan Stanley and Serra Chevrolet v. General Motors) to support it's premise. It showed no trend of large corporations being fined for not archiving their emails. The linked article's premise is a weak one, and the fact that Macworld linked to it, doesn't make it (or the premise of this article, for that matter) any stronger.
2) In the General Motors case, the fine was for a "late response" to produce discovery. Not producing discovery in a legal case is far broader than (and not the same as) not having a document retention policy.
2) In the Morgan Stanley case, the linked article itself states that the judge's decision to fine it for not being able to prove it's innocence by providing archived emails was an "unusual step".
3) Morgan Stanley was NOT fined because it did not have a document retention policy, for apparently IT DID (a fact that would be hard to hide in a company with that many employees). The judge fined Morgan Stanley because, having a document retention policy, when the plaintiff asked for the relevant documents to be produced, Morgan Stanley's response was something like, "Oops, sorry, we accidently overwrote the backup tapes." This is not the same as being fined for not having a document retention policy.
4) It may have been that it was less costly in the long run for Morgan Stanley to take the $15,000,000 fine than to produce the requested documents that might serve as evidence against itself. Note, that the case was later overturned. Would it have been overturned had the requested documents not been "overwritten"? Hmmm... Apple, having billions in cash reserve, and being worth billions as a company may believe that in litigation a $15,000,000 fine (or even $150,000,000 fine) is preferable to retaining evidence that might help a plaintiff win billions.
5) If I were Apple, having the army of lawyers that it must certainly have, I would take their legal advice over Macworld's.

[ericole]

I totally agree with the first poster. I've worked for the federal govt for years (DoD). We are always trying to CLEAR our exchange servers b/c so many idiots use their email like it's their hard drive. But it's mostly b/c they don't actually understand what is going on behind the scenes. Only my current agency considers some things created on email retainable, but the number of people that have to do that is VERY small - very high level.

[leehljp]

While not the exactly same thing, I think Mail needs a security album, i.e. a method for securing individual albums from prying eyes or direct access by others.
Some high security and confidential email simply cannot be deleted because of the need to refer back to this over time as a necessity.
Look at the current steps for dealing with a FEW within a thousand ordinary emails:
1. Saving the security email as a saved document, 2. placing it in a secure folder on the computer, 3 securing that folder. Part 2: referring back to it: 4 opening the saved doc with a long password, 5 copy the document, 6 paste back into an email to high level management - these are too many steps for security documents.
The ability to have a single or multiple "Security" album would solve some and if the need to delete an album arose, quick. But securely locked single album or two would be a step.

[mdawson]

Quote

javaman wrote:

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Quote

While I don't think that Macworld has an "anti-Apple bias", after reading the linked "Storage on Trial" article, I do have to agree that this story seems pretty weak.

Actually, my statement of bias was not against Macworld, they are simply reporting the story, but the anonymous lawyer that specifically pointed to Apple as if they are not following a corporate trend. Good analysis, otherwise.

[patspeak]

An e-discovery lawyer should be aware that employees of any company are not required to save email for long periods of time. The scenario mentioned at the end of the article is completely irrelevant. If there is no litigation current, employees may delete there email as needed. Any sort of fines or sanctions would / could only be levied if materials were destroyed during an actual litigation. Apple clearly indicates it does have a policy of maintaining materials one a litigation is in motion.