TY - JOUR AU - Sockwell, Daniel Long PY - 2014/08/06 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Deterring Discovery-Driven Data Deletion JF - Columbia Business Law Review JA - CBLR VL - 2014 IS - 2 SE - Notes DO - 10.7916/cblr.v2014i2.1779 UR - https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/CBLR/article/view/1779 SP - 548-592 AB - <p>Litigation costs frequently frighten companies into deleting valuable data—and this problem has gotten worse with new technology.&nbsp; In the past, litigation costs were dwarfed by the physical costs of storage: keeping letters in filing cabinets was so expensive that companies deleted data without even considering litigation.&nbsp; Now, however, technology has caused physical storage costs to fall dramatically; hard drives are vastly less expensive than filing cabinets.&nbsp; As these costs fell, the litigation costs became more important. &nbsp;Litigation costs now cause a large fraction of data deletion.&nbsp; This Note identifies the rise in discovery-driven data deletion and explains how this data deletion benefits no one and harms society.&nbsp; To solve this problem, this Note proposes reforms to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that would prevent discovery costs from incentivizing so much data deletion.&nbsp; This Note closes with practical thoughts on how judges and attorneys operating under the current Rules can minimize costs.</p><p>The author would like to thank Daniel Richman, Shreya Fadia, Debbie Long, W.D. Sockwell, Bert Huang, Maura Grossman, and the staff of the Columbia Business Law Review.</p> ER -