Kroll Ontrack conducted a survey of approximately 138 reported electronic discovery opinions issued from Jan. 1, 2008 to Oct. 31, 2008, and found that over half of those opinions addressed court-ordered sanctions, data production, and preservation and spoliation issues. You can see the press release from Kroll Ontrack HERE.

What does this mean to you?  It means that if your company doesn't have a document preservation / destruction policy in place, your company is exposed to hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) in fines and penalties—and that is NOT covered by most insurance policies.

Case in point: take a look at Kevin Keithley v. TheHomeStore.com, a case from California in which the court awarded over $300,000 to the plaintiff as a result of the defendant failing to comply with e-discovery rules.

Not scared yet?  Ok, check out Qualcomm Inc. v. Broadcom Corp., another case from California in which Qualcomm got whacked with over $8 million in sanctions resulting from e-discovery violations.

I've said it before (check out past entries HERE), and I'll repeat it again: your company needs to get a document retention / destruction policy in place, and then it needs to enforce the policy strictly. 

If you don't know what goes into a document retention / destruction policy, talk to an attorney.  Most policies that I've drafted are complex and far-reaching—-for good reason.  The document is meant to protect you and guide your company through a maze of federal and state document retention laws.  It keeps you out of the situation where the court asks you to produce documents, and your response falls somewhere between, "Uh, what documents?" and "Hmmm, I'm not sure where those are." 

In any event, make sure legal counsel reviews your policy so you don't end up destroying documents that you shouldn't.

So run (don't walk) and get this done already.  Or, of course, you can do nothing and then lose millions of dollars.  (And rest assured, if that happens, I will say, "I told you so.")