Deepwater dispute underscores need for e-discovery policy

Firms urged to take steps to ensure data doesn't get deleted in legal battles

The on-going legal tussle between oil companies BP and Halliburton should stand as a stark warning for IT chiefs to double check their e-discovery procedures, UK lawyers have warned.

BP and Halliburton are currently suing each other in relation to the Deepwater Horizon blowout, which killed 11 oil workers and polluted the Gulf of Mexico.

This week, BP filed documents in a federal court in New Orleans accusing Halliburton of deliberately destroying documents relating to the case – charges Halliburton disputes.

BP has asked the court to force Halliburton to turn some of its computers over to a third-party for examination.

Being compelled to hand over company servers to a third party can have a deleterious impact on an enterprise – and while it's a step that UK courts are only likely to take in extreme circumstances – it highlights the need for battle-hardened e-discovery processes, Shane Gleghorn, a partner at law firm Taylor Wessing told Computing.

While courts can accept that sometimes data relating to a case gets destroyed as part of an organisation's data retention policy, they will take a much dimmer view of any data destroyed after legal action has started, said Gleghorn.

“As soon as you become aware of a case, you need to put a stop notice out to ensure any information is safeguarded,” he said.

The UK courts typically force companies that are in dispute to agree to an e-discovery process prior to trial, this minimises the chances of later disputes.