Most people who've been through litigation know that once it
has started, you can't just grab a shredder and get rid of your
bad documents. Why? Legally speaking, the parties have a duty to
preserve their documents. When dealing with paper, shredding has a
permanent effect. Electronic documents are far more pervasive than
their physical counterparts and are more difficult to erase.
A common saying has developed: once something is on the
internet, it is there forever. Like most sayings, this isn't
100% accurate. What is accurate is that once something is on the
internet, it can be extremely difficult and in some cases nearly
impossible to remove.
What happens when an opposing party has changed their
website's content frequently over the years? What if key
evidence could be information formerly found on that website? The
first step would be to ask the opposing party whether they still
have that information. But what if they deleted that information
long ago?
