top of page

Don't Spoil Things By Ignoring Hotmail and Gmail


In October 2013, Puerto Rico Telephone Company, Inc. v. San Juan Cable, LLC, the District Court for Puerto Rico issued an order finding that a party had a duty to preserve email messages in the personal accounts of their employees when they knew that those accounts were used for business activities. The email accounts in question had been used by officers of the company for more than 7 years.

The court however declined to issue an adverse inference sanction, because of the absence of bad faith, and failure to demonstrate prejudice. In this case only three email chains were lost, and they were later recovered through other means. The emails came from the accounts of officers who departed the producing party at the time the first document requests were served. The emails also did not directly support the plaintiff's claims or weaken the defendant's defenses.

The court did leave open the possibility that forensic analysis of the employee's email accounts and personal computers might be warranted.


 
 

Sean O'Shea has more than 20 years of experience in the litigation support field with major law firms in New York and San Francisco.   He is an ACEDS Certified eDiscovery Specialist and a Relativity Certified Administrator.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the owner and do not reflect the views or opinions of the owner’s employer.

If you have a question or comment about this blog, please make a submission using the form to the right. 

Your details were sent successfully!

© 2015 by Sean O'Shea . Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page