Final Words from me about document production requirements and remailers.

[jamesd at echeque.com]

    --
On 4 Aug 2001, at 16:08, Black Unicorn wrote:

>
> I am going to try and be as clear and as slow as possible-
> knowing full well that it probably will make no difference and
> that my words will be twisted, strawmaned, touted or defamed
> whatever I do.  Regardless:
>
> [...] The trial court permits the plaintiffs to sue for
> spoliation, mostly on the basis of the disposition of the car,
> not the papers or lack of records, although those are
>  mentioned,

Another citation whose irrelevance demonstrates the absence of relevant cites.

The basis of the spolation charge was not that the dealer should have kept records, but that the car was disposed of when it was supposedly material evidence.

This cite, and the other cites you give, supposedly "open the door" to charging people for spolation for failing to keep records in the ordinary course of business.

Yet no one has actually gone through that door, despite the very large number of of people who do not keep records in the ordinary course of business, and the very large number of lawsuits obstructed by that failure.

> I submit that the facts of these two cases, along with some of
> the others I've cited and the FRCP among other statutes,
> suggest that it's not much of a stretch for a remailer operator
> to find him or herself in the midst of a spoliation dispute.

Perhaps it is not a large stretch.  Yet it is a good deal bigger stretch than hitting Microsoft with a spolation suit for its new policy of routine and regularly scheduled destruction of records, and Microsoft has not yet been hit.

> I submit further that a remailer operator would do themselves
> quite a lot of favors if they put themselves in a position to
> look squeaky clean in front of a judge if and when this
> happens.  We have real life-real cypherpunk examples that this
> works