April 17–Intel’s new date for missing emails
The IT press continues to cover the Intel/AMD email safe harbor controversy moving its attention from safe harbor to cost shifting.
From eWEEK referencing the 2003 Zubulake-versus-UBS Warburg case,
…defendant UBS Warburg claimed that old, deleted e-mail messages requested by the plaintiff in a gender discrimination and retaliation dispute were stored on 94 backup tapes and that the cost of retrieving them—$300,000—made recovery of the information “unreasonable.”
After several months of hearings, the court ultimately ruled that the plaintiff was to help pay for restoration of the evidence, although the defendant was to bear the major part of the expense: UBS Warburg had to pay 75 percent, while the plaintiff’s share was 25 percent.
In addition, the court ruled that the defendant must pay “for any costs incurred in reviewing the restored documents for privilege.”
So, if Intel reports on April 17 that it will take much more time and money to recover the missing e-mails, Farnan could indeed grant the time and theoretically could even order AMD to pitch in for the e-discovery costs—which could easily run into high-six-figure territory.
Filed under Sound Evidence.
June 6th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
[…] While I’m not sure this will be the most data-intensive legal battle we’ll see, this case is an interesting one to watch, particularly when it comes to testing the safe harbor over the mistakes made during the legal hold process (see my earlier post). […]