I’ve covered many cases involving deleted emails in discovery. Cloudficient discusses eDiscovery and deleted emails and whether they can be recovered.

In this article by Shelley Bougnague titled (wait for it!) eDiscovery and Deleted Emails: What Information Can Be Discovered? (available here), she provides examples of scandals that can be linked back to deleted emails, including JPMorgan Chase’s $4 million fine in 2023 to the Washington Post and NIH scandals of 2024.

However, deleted emails are often still recoverable (which makes them discoverable), depending on how they were deleted and the systems in place within the organization. When an email is deleted, it is not always permanently erased from the system immediately. Instead, it may be moved to a deleted items folder or remain on the server until it is overwritten by new data. This lag between deletion and permanent removal means that there is often a window of opportunity during which deleted emails can be recovered.

Too late to do that on your email platform? If you have an advanced solution like Expireon (which captures an unaltered copy of every email as it is sent or received, ensuring that even if an email is deleted, a complete record remains accessible for eDiscovery), you have a fallback – even if you have a rogue employee who intentionally deletes emails to destroy evidence. No company wants sanctions or a scandal over deleted emails.

So, what are additional challenges and considerations associated with eDiscovery and deleted emails? And how to data retention policies fit into the mix? Find out here, it’s only one click! Don’t worry, it won’t be deleted! 😉

So, what do you think? Have you handled a case where emails were deleted when there was a duty to preserve? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using GPT-4o’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot sitting at a computer hitting the delete button for an email”.

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Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.