
Record Retention Risks and Rules 25
worth of electronic records immediately upon request, and the Em-
ployee Retirement Income Security Act has a rule that e-mail and other
correspondence related to employee benefit plans be kept indefinitely.
13
Unless your organization’s e-mail and other electronic business records
are governed by law or regulations, you are free to determine the reten-
tion periods and deletion schedules that are most appropriate for your
organization.
As previously noted, the courts typically do not punish businesses
for deleting e-mail in the ordinary course of business. Nonetheless,
thanks to FRCP, SOX, HIPAA, and other widely publicized ...