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A recent court ruling illustrates the importance of having an effective information governance (IG) program in place.

In Sell v. Country Life Insurance, the court ruled against Country Life Insurance for its discovery failings. In its order of default judgment, the court made clear that it did not approve of the insurer's e-mail retention and preservation procedures. Country Life made minimal effort to retain or preserve important e-mails detailing discussions among claims analysts about Sell's denied insurance claim.

Legaltech News reported that the insurer retained e-mails on the Microsoft Exchange server for a limited time. When it reached its storage capacity, the server would overwrite e-mails and employees were "directed to clean out their email boxes every three or four months to avoid filling up the exchange server."

To avoid such e-mail destruction, employees would have had to "electronically deposit their communications into the appropriate claim file." In other words, employees would have had to self-select documents for retention because "emails are not automatically included in the claim file."

The insurer did not issue a litigation hold until the claimant filed a lawsuit. Country Life did...

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