E-Discovery and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures

CHAPTER 4: CONSEQUENCES OF NOT ADDRESSING THE E-DISCOVERY CHALLENGE

If an organization forgoes E-Discovery preparation efforts prior to the commencement of actual litigation, the consequences could be severe. Examples include:

• Adverse inference jury instruction: If electronic evidence is not produced in a timely manner, a judge may instruct the jury to assume that the missing evidence would have been ‘adverse’ to the party that failed to produce it. This will greatly diminish this party’s chances of legal success. Two highly visible examples include Zubulake v UBS Warburg and Coleman v Morgan Stanley. The defendant financial institutions in both lawsuits lost their cases due to their failure to adequately produce e-mail evidence, and the ...