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The Smoking Gun: Electronic messages and voice mail, candid and relatively casual forms of corporate communications, increasingly are providing the most incriminating evidence used against companies in litigation.” Business Week, April 17, 1995.
In the Business Week article (“The Snitch in the System: Old data are showing up in court—and winning cases”), John H. Jessen, the managing director of Electronic Evidence Discovery, Inc. (1215 4th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98161-1001, (800) 343-0131) is quoted as saying, “In the next five years, every single company that has a computer will be impacted by the use of electronic data in litigation.”
The article also quotes Joan E. Feldman, President of Computer Forensics, Inc. (501 E. Pine St., #3, Seattle, WA 98122-2353, (206) 324-6232) as saying, “If you find one message that supports your case, even if written as a joke, it can be worth $500,000.”
Companies are retaining too much data electronically because they have not set up systems to purge files like they do with their hard copy files. Even those who are purging electronic files are not safe from having information discovered. Deleted computer files can be readily retrieved with many utility programs available off-the-shelf to consumers today. Computer experts can supposedly even recover data that was wiped clean from disks.
Insurance investigators should keep abreast of developments in this area and include the capability (to search for and/or recover computer data) among their investigative resources.
John Wood, Editor
Claims Intelligence*Report, May 95
(808) 885-5090
Reprinted With Permission.
© Copyright 1995 Alikim Media