A few weeks back, I was reading about Electronic Evidence and ERM or Electronic Records Management and I wondered about what were some current examples of how e-evidence is being used in cases.  So I decided to take a stroll on google and see what I could find.

One of the first sites I found was actually a dedicated site to e-evidence information center site.  The latest news article on this site detailed how IM and email messages were held as evidence for a murder investigation where a girl, her boyfriend and a mutual friend severely beat the girl’s mother and left her in the house to die.  The girl and her boy friend had been talking about it for months through the internet.  This is more personal crime instead of corporate. 

I found another useful site by Sensei Enterprises, Inc, that holds an Electronic Evidence Case Digest. In June, in an ATM fee Antitrust Litigation case,  through a suit for price-fixing.  The plaintiff wanted all electronic files from the defendant to comply will the 2006 amendments to Rule 34 of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.  This amendment made defendants have to produce TIFF files of all transactions.  However, due to the fact that this amendment was almost 2 years after the lawsuit was filed, the court says it wasn’t enough to break the agreement made already by the two parties.  In September, there was a case between Sun and Lawson.  Lawson wanted information in electronic copy and Sun gave him a great deal of information in hard copy.  The court ruled in the favor of Lawson due to a letter sent to Sun about his wish for electronic copy.  This site is a great resource to view how the courts are ruling with electronic evidence along many different categories such as Electronic Evidence Protocols, Emails, Metadata, Preservation of Evidence, etc.

 From my jaunt through Google results, I’ve found that electronic evidence is becoming more and more prevalent in court cases, both corporate or personal.  Its definitely important to keep on top of where the court is ruling and what electronic files a company needs to preserve and what files should be deleted within the company.