Defendant clearly had a duty to preserve documents relevant to plaintiff’s claims when it received notice of plaintiff’s EEOC charges on or before November 30, 2007; accordingly, defendant had a duty to preserve documents relevant to plaintiff’s discrimination claims at least by this date. More than good intentions are required; those intentions must be followed up with concrete actions reasonably calculated to ensure that relevant materials will be preserved such as giving out specific criteria on what should or should not be saved for litigation. It is unreasonable to allow a party’s interested employees to make the decision about the relevance of such documents, especially when those same employees have the ability to permanently delete unfavorable email from a party’s system. As one court has noted, simply accepting whatever documents or information might be produced by its employees, without preventing defendants from clearing the hard drives of former employees, was improper. Most non-lawyer employees, whether marketing consultants or high school deans, do not have enough knowledge of the applicable law to correctly recognize which documents are relevant to a lawsuit and which are not. Furthermore, employees are often reluctant to reveal their mistakes or misdeeds. Jones v. Bremen High School District, No.08-C-3548, 2010 WL 2106640 (N.D.Ill. May 25, 2010).
0 Comments