Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
The letter arrives on a Tuesday. A former partner, a customer, or a competitor says you owe money, and near the end there is a paragraph telling you to preserve all documents. Meanwhile your email system purges old messages every 90 days, a departing employee’s laptop is about to be wiped for the next hire, and someone in the office is wondering whether a few of those text messages should stay around.
The safe answer is simple. Once a dispute is on the horizon, stop the routine destruction, keep what relates to the dispute, and do it in a way you can later prove. The law behind that answer has more nuance than the demand letter admits, but a business owner should not be looking for the edge of the rule with his own evidence at stake.