Douglas Reiser is a Washington state construction lawyer, and one of the founders of ClaimKit, “a company that provides collection, analysis and management of claim files for construction sureties.” In a recent post at his blog, he emphasizes the importance of data management for contractors, particularly in the event of litigation:
Litigation means documents need to be preserved. I mean, now! That means that once a lawsuit begins, contractors should immediately be ready to enact a “litigation hold” to prevent the destruction of documents. Often this is initiated by motion and court order, but you should be doing this the moment a problem develops.
Why preserve? Because the extent of damages for failing to enact a hold can be crippling. Check out what a court did to Samsung in its mega-litigation against Apple over patent interference. Once the court determined that Samsung had failed to timely advise employees to turn off the auto-delete function in email, it decided to slap it with serious penalties.
AEC Forensics 