You show up in court with a US Certified Mail “Green Card” delivery receipt, evidence that supposedly proves you delivered a timely notice. The other party simply stands up and says quizzically, “Sure we got the certified letter, but no one in our office could figure out why we were sent an empty envelope!” And of course, there’s no proof of what was or wasn’t inside the envelope. Did the mail room attendant or administrator forget to insert the letter?
At Frankel Insurance, staff sent an email to bind additional commercial property to an existing policy. Later, a claim was submitted to the insurance carrier, and the carrier denied having a record of the additional property having been added to the policy.
An important trend for companies today is use of web-based messaging and CRM platforms such as Salesforce.com to manage, track and/or secure outbound correspondence. While some of these platforms let you send attached documents with your message, most (including Salesforce.com) do not save copies of attachments in the sent record stored in the web-based system.
The following is a useful primer for those that need to consider the evolving methods and concerns in dealing with electronic discovery of documents and information in the context of a current or potential legal dispute.
