I think we’ve gone well past the point of productivity on this. I’ve asked some lawyers for opinions on this. I’ll just address a few things briefly.
If the whistleblower doesn’t have evidence of the meeting taking place, and no memos, reports or e-mails documenting that they passed their concerns up the chain, it’s perfectly reasonable for a representative of the corporation to reply, “I don’t recall hearing about this concern.”
I agree this is true in general, but my point is limited to the cases where documentation would in fact exist were it not for the company’s communication policy or data retention policy. If there was a point in the Google case you brought up earlier where Google had attempted to cast doubt on a DOJ witness by pointing out the lack of corroborating evidence (which would have been deleted per Google’s policy), I’d strongly reconsider my opinion.
What the article about the case said was just that DOJ complained that it would like to have all the documentation that Google destroyed, and that this probably contained evidence which proved their case. It did not say that Google challenged DOJ witnesses on a lack of corroboration between their testimony and the discoverable record.
It doesn’t have to be the Google case. Any case where the defense tried to impeach a witness on grounds of lack of corroborating evidence where that evidence would have been intentionally destroyed by a data retention policy would do.
There are other things I disagree with, but as I said, we’re being unproductive.
I think we’ve gone well past the point of productivity on this. I’ve asked some lawyers for opinions on this. I’ll just address a few things briefly.
I agree this is true in general, but my point is limited to the cases where documentation would in fact exist were it not for the company’s communication policy or data retention policy. If there was a point in the Google case you brought up earlier where Google had attempted to cast doubt on a DOJ witness by pointing out the lack of corroborating evidence (which would have been deleted per Google’s policy), I’d strongly reconsider my opinion.
What the article about the case said was just that DOJ complained that it would like to have all the documentation that Google destroyed, and that this probably contained evidence which proved their case. It did not say that Google challenged DOJ witnesses on a lack of corroboration between their testimony and the discoverable record.
It doesn’t have to be the Google case. Any case where the defense tried to impeach a witness on grounds of lack of corroborating evidence where that evidence would have been intentionally destroyed by a data retention policy would do.
There are other things I disagree with, but as I said, we’re being unproductive.