Case Blurb: Alcoa, Inc., Demand Letter and Reasonable Anticipation of Litigation.

The propounding of a demand letter has been found to be the point when litigation should be reasonably anticipated. Consolidated Aluminum Corp. v. Alcoa, Inc., 2006 WL 2583308 (M.D.La) (citing Housing Rights Center v. Sterling, 2005 WL 3320739 (C.D.Cal.2005)).

Case Blurb: Alcoa, Inc., Scope of the Duty to Preserve

The duty to preserve encompasses any document or tangible items authored or made by individuals likely to have discoverable information that the disclosing party may use to support its claims or defenses. Consolidated Aluminum Corp. v. Alcoa, Inc., Slip Copy 2006 WL 2583308 (M.D.La).

Case Blurb: Alcoa, Inc., suspension of routine document retention policy

Once a party reasonably anticipates litigation, it must suspend its routine document retention/destruction policy and put in place a “litigation hold” to ensure the preservation of relevant documents. Consolidated Aluminum Corp. v. Alcoa, Inc., 2006 WL 2583308 (M.D.La 2006).

Case Blurb: Alcoa, Inc., back-up tapes considered accessible

On the other hand, if [back-up tapes] are considered accessible (i.e., actively used for information retrieval), then such tapes would likely be subject to the litigation hold. Consolidated Aluminum Corp. v. Alcoa, Inc., 2006 WL 2583308 (M.D.La) (citing Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212, 218 (S.D.N.Y.2003)).

Case Blurb: Alcoa, Inc., back up tapes recycled during litigation

[Back up tapes] may usually continue to be recycled on the schedule set forth in the company’s policy. Consolidated Aluminum Corp. v. Alcoa, Inc., Slip Copy 2006 WL 2583308 (M.D.La) (citing Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212, 218 (S.D.N.Y.2003))

Case Blurb: Alcoa Inc., Preservation of b/u tapes

As a general rule, a party need not preserve all backup tapes even when it reasonably anticipates litigation. Consolidated Aluminum Corp. v. Alcoa, Inc., 2006 WL 2583308 (M.D.La) (citing Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212, 218 (S.D.N.Y.2003)).

MS Office 2007 File Formats Discussed

Stephane Rodriguez is once again in the news. If you haven’t heard of him, then you should take a look at his comprehensive review of Office 2007 file formats. The introduction from that article went like this:

The new Office 2007 file formats are ZIP files that contain parts some of which are XML, some others are native file formats such as JPEG pictures, and the remaining binary parts end up being referred to as BIN parts. BIN parts are of particular interest for the file format consumer or updater since the underlying file formats are undocumented (at the time of writing, August 10 2006) and are several additional file formats to deal with.

BIN parts appear in a number of cases. If you insert a VBA macro or an OLE object in a Word 2007, Excel 2007 or Powerpoint 2007 document, then there will be one or more BIN parts of interest. BIN parts are zip entries consisting of files with extension .BIN, that actually contain their own file format depending on the MIME type defined in the relationships part

He goes on to examine the “bin” file in quite some detail. Read the article, and if anyone asks you about Office 2007 file formats, you can tell them you’ve bin there, done that!