Judge Gives Intel More Time To Find Missing E-mail

narramissic writes "ITworld is reporting that Intel has until April 17 (7 days more than the original deadline of April 10) to 'explain to a judge why it lost e-mail records that could provide proof that the chip maker used anticompetitive practices as alleged by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).' According to an order from Vincent Poppiti, the special master hearing negotiations of the case, the court is looking for an accounting of Intel's document preservation problems and a proposal for a better solution for archiving future records."

Re:They could try the truth...

[ZDRuX]

... we can't find them because we deleted them.

Actually... that's exactly what they did.

That process hit a snag when Intel said in March it had accidentally deleted many of those records, including e-mail written by its Chairman Craig Barrett and CEO Paul Ottelini. The problem happened because the company failed to instruct certain employees to keep records of their own e-mail, other employees assumed the IT department would do that task for them, and meanwhile the company's IT system was automatically deleting most e-mail after a certain amount of time, Intel told a judge.

and...

"Although Intel has agreed to restore all data captured in the thousands of backup tapes it made and preserved, no one can say with any degree of confidence that this will put Humpty-Dumpty back together again," AMD said in a March 5 court statement.

Document retention.

[joe_bruin]

These email lapses and information destruction policies are becoming turning points in lawsuits all too often. It is absurd that major corporations are not required to keep all executive email on record, forever. Not just for lawsuits, more so to protect investors and the public against illegal and unethical behavior by the company's officers. The Sarbanes-Oxley act requires that records be made available to "Understand how significant transactions are initiated, authorized, supported, processed, and reported;", and I would think email is a significant component of this.

Re:I call poppycock

[Dausha]

"...No idea how that happened. Oh well, since there's no evidence of our transgressions thanks to this 'oopsie', we'll just go home now..."

Except, it does not exactly work like that. Law is more experience than reason; courts know that if you have evidence that points to your guilt you're more likely to "lose" it. So, when the plaintiff can prove you probably had evidence showing your guilt and you fail to produce it, the court can allow a negative inference to be drawn. This means the judge will tell the jury that the defendant likely had incriminating evidence and destroyed it and that the jury is free to assume it was destroyed to cover the defendant's ass.

I clerked for a plaintiff's firm that was good at this sort of thing. The attorney tended to have defendants who had dispatch records that were destroyed quarterly by standard operating procedure (SOP) (required by law that they have _a_ SOP). However, one defendant had a special SOP to destroy such tapes as soon as frigg'n possible when something bad happened---like three separate, fatal accidents caused by its company on one day recorded on one dispatch tape. The request for the tape was made within a couple of weeks and "oops," the defendant lost it. The Court had a field day with the defendant.

The problem, however, is that a gullible jury can be persuaded that the adage "never assume malice where incompetence will suffice" is in play.

Here there was probably an email retention SOP that was violated by these emails going missing. In that case, the judge is probably giving Intel another week to settle or come up with the emails or allow AMD to move for a negative inference that it will more likely win.