{"id":894912,"date":"2018-09-20T15:10:19","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T21:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/?p=894912"},"modified":"2018-09-20T15:10:19","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T21:10:19","slug":"avoiding-e-trouble-construction-litigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/avoiding-e-trouble-construction-litigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding ‘E-trouble’ in Construction Litigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judah Lifschitz | Construction Executive<\/a> | August 14, 2018<\/p>\n

During the 2016 presidential election, the FBI subpoenaed Hillary Clinton’s emails after she used a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. Separately, the more recent investigation into Donald Trump\u2019s campaign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, resulted in scrutiny over both his email and social media.<\/p>\n

As shown the above examples, there are damaging effects of electronically stored information in politics, but how does it impact the construction industry?<\/p>\n

If not used carefully and properly, emails will serve as \u201ctruth serum\u201d in court. Attorneys can simply read an email to know employees\u2019 thoughts or actions, meaning an impulsive email or social media post will most likely come back to haunt the company. Requests for ESI are inevitable in litigation today and the production of inappropriate emails and other ESI open the door for an opposing attorney to argue that a company fosters a culture of uncouth, unprofessional and unfocused project management.<\/p>\n

REQUESTS FOR ESI ARE INEVITABLE IN LITIGATION TODAY<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It is estimated that 90 percent of all information is now created digitally \u2013 the majority of which is never printed. A comparison of the ESI and hard-copy documents produced in a recent construction case revealed that only 25 percent of email communication had been printed to paper. A Duke University survey revealed that the ESI Discovery costs in typical cases range from approximately $600,000 to just less than $3 million. And in large cases, the costs average from $2.3 million to $9.7 million.<\/p>\n

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ESI is created and stored in a variety of places, including computers, fax machines or copiers\u2019 internal hard drives, voicemail, web pages, smartphones, jump drives, memory cards and external hard drives. It is important to remember that all of the data and information created and stored in these various places is subject to being produced to a litigation adversary in discovery, granting them access to a significant volume of information \u2013 some of which is produced in a very informal setting.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Opposing attorneys acquire this information through the discovery process, which includes:<\/p>\n