Spoliation laws affect new Wisconsin eDiscovery regulations

Contributed by Roumiana Deltcheva (Wednesday, November 03, 2010) | Category : eDiscovery

Companies and legal counsels in Wisconsin must take the state's existing spoliation law into account with new eDiscovery regulations set to take effect, according to a report in Wisconsin Lawyer.

Wisconsin defines spoliation as the destruction or withholding of critical evidence, which pertains to email archiving in the case of eDiscovery. Analysis to determine spoliation includes determining if a party knew or should have known litigation was a possibility and if a party destroyed evidence it knew or should have known pertained to a specific case.

In terms of electronic evidence, according to the Wisconsin Lawyer report, "counsel must take affirmative steps to monitor compliance so that all sources of discoverable information are identified and searched." The recent influx of electronically stored information means this step is even more important.

A federal court in Detroit may levy fines and sanctions against the city for spoliation of evidence in a lawsuit involving the former mayor and a dancer. It was recently revealed that computers belonging to the former mayor and his then-chief of staff were thrown away despite pending litigation.