ISIPP News: ISIPP Advises on Email Handling Policies
INSTITUTE FOR SPAM AND INTERNET PUBLIC POLICY ADVISES COMPANIES TO
AVOID LEGAL TROUBLE WITH STRONG EMAIL HANDLING POLICIES
"Don't Become the Next Morgan Stanley" Advises ISIPP in Wake of $1.45
Billion Email Mismanagement Judgement
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - May 23, 2005 - The Institute for Spam and Internet
Public Policy (ISIPP) is advising companies to take the $1.45billion
email mismanagement judgement recently announced against Morgan
Stanley as a wake-up call.
"For the most part, organizations are very blithe about how they
process, retain, and delete email both sent and received by their
organization," said Anne P. Mitchell, Esq., President and CEO of the
Institute, and a Professor of Law. "In fact, most companies have no
email handling and retention policies at all. This is a big mistake,
as email is usually one of the first things demanded during a
lawsuit. It was exactly this mismanagement of email which lead to the
enormous legal judgement against Morgan Stanley this past week."
Last week's judgement against Morgan Stanley involved the financial
company's failure to retain and produce email demanded during a
lawsuit by billionaire Ronald Perelman, in which Perelman accused
Morgan Stanley of deceiving him about a business deal.
"While businesses must, and usually do, have written document
retention policies, they often fail to have similar policies relating
to email. Yet a great deal of information is both sent and received
in email, and copies of email are almost always demanded during the
discovery phase of a lawsuit. A court is not going to take kindly to
a defendant saying "Oops, it was deleted," explained Mitchell, who
said that she knows of several companies which have met similar legal
fates where the failure to retain email or other electronic
communications has been equated by the court with destruction of evidence.
"Just as importantly," said Mitchell, who teaches Internet Law at
Lincoln Law School of San Jose, "companies need to make sure that they
have a clear policy in place about the scope of what their employees
may discuss electronically during the course of their employment, not
just in email, but in Internet forums such as chat rooms, instant
messengers, and Usenet. Each piece of email, every little public
remark, is a potential smoking gun, just waiting to indict the company
from which the message originated."
ISIPP, which is best known for its accreditation services for email
senders and marketers, its anti-spam technology for email receivers,
and its Spam and the Law conferences, also advises companies on email
retention and handling, and Internet public statement policies.
Added Mitchell, who is on the advisory boards of Kinar Secure Email,
Relemail Email Privacy Certification, and the Virus Bulletin, "The
time to put such a policy in place was yesterday, and certainly today
- not once once the lawsuit happens. By that time it is too late."
