Gulf Oil Spill Triggers Lawsuit Flood – Would Your Company Be Ready?

The Gulf Coast oil spill is an example of a potential litigation disaster for any company – not just for those in Oil and Gas.  Companies across litigation-prone industries like utilities, pharmaceuticals, or financial services all have potential devastating legal exposure just beneath the surface of their business.

As coastal states prepare for the economic and environmental impact of the Gulf Coast oil spill, many estimate that this event could produce the largest wave of litigation since Hurricane Katrina. The first few lawsuits have already been filed seeking compensation for economic loss, and loss of life or injury. Temporary restraining orders have been issued against the companies involved to mandate that they preserve all documents and emails related to the disaster in anticipation of drawn-out litigation.

There is no doubt that electronic discovery will play an important role in the litigation procedures surrounding this event. And, given the large number of anticipated legal matters, multiple defendants, custodians and law firms, the legal discovery process will certainly be lengthy, complex and costly. But a company’s litigation preparedness – whether in this case or others – can help companies respond faster to litigation requests, reduce the overall cost of eDiscovery, and reduce risk of government fines and court sanctions.

Litigation is Inevitable, Prepare With A Litigation Readiness Solution
Companies need a fast, accurate and cost-effective way to gain comprehensive visibility and control over large amounts of business information and do all this before—not after—the need arises for compliance, governance or legal discovery.

StoredIQ allows companies to proactively manage information for litigation readiness and to meet compliance requirements. StoredIQ provides intelligent information management to automate data classification so that organizations can proactively identify, protect and delete information according to specific corporate, legal and regulatory requirements. By offering a proactive, in-house solution for managing risk, costs and legal decision making, StoredIQ can help organizations:

• Make better, faster legal decisions based on real-time information about your documents and email.
• Reduce the risk of spoliation, improving the ability to implement and manage litigation holds on electronically stored information (ESI).
• Manage the risk from old records by proactively identifying and destroying documents whose age exceeds document retention policies.
• Contain storage costs while streamlining access to critical information.
• Help ensure that valuable business information is safe and accessible to authorized personnel only, according to regulatory compliance requirements and corporate access policies.
• Improve eDiscovery cost predictability by reducing the dependency upon outside vendors to collect and process ESI.
• Enhance preparation for Rule 26(f) conferences, based on accurate, comprehensive and timely knowledge of the ESI.
• Reduce your risk of government fines, court sanctions and negative verdicts.

Though the Gulf Coast oil disaster highlights an extreme example, companies of all sizes and in all industries are now faced with an escalating amount of data across their enterprise. Multiple legal matters are more frequent, and often involve multiple law firms, custodians and experts in disparate geographies. To address these challenges, the StoredIQ proactive eDiscovery solution delivers a consistent, cost-effective repeatable system for proactive litigation readiness.

Tags: e-discovery, electronic discovery, gulf coast oil spill, litigation readiness

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 1:27 pm and is filed under eDiscovery, litigation readiness, oil and gas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.