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AMD Claims Intel Inadvertently Destroyed Evidence in Antitrust Case

Posted by Hemos on from the ah-the-smell-of-open-court-in-the-morning dept.

Marcus Yam writes "In an unpublished statement to the U.S. District Court of Delaware, AMD alleges Intel allowed the destruction of evidence in pending antitrust litigation. According to the opening letter of the AMD statement, 'Through what appears to be a combination of gross communication failures, an ill-conceived plan of document retention and lackluster oversight by outside counsel, Intel has apparently allowed evidence to be destroyed.'"

10 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by SCPRedMage · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...at least they aren't claiming Intel did it on purpose. I would hate to see AMD turn into the next SCO.

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    My sig can beat up your sig.
  2. That is a bit silly by sphealey · · Score: 5, Informative

    Historically e-mail systems were never designed for intensive archiving and ad-hoc searching across the database. In fact, even the current generation of systems require bolt-on archivers to meet the new federal evidence requirements. And I talk to people every day at very large entities that are still using Outlook Express, local mailbox storage, and have no usable archiving system.

    Suggesting that the inability to search e-mail in legacy systems is "destruction of evidence" is more than a bit silly in my personal opinion.

    sPh

    1. Re:That is a bit silly by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Suggesting that the inability to search e-mail in legacy systems is "destruction of evidence" is more than a bit silly in my personal opinion.

      Describing it as accidental destruction of evidence though is perfectly accurate, at least from a non-technical legal point of view.

      "Through what appears to be a combination of gross communication failures, an ill-conceived plan of document retention and lackluster oversight by outside counsel, Intel has apparently allowed evidence to be destroyed."

      That's pretty much what you're describing, right? Large organizations with completely inadequate data retention, which inevitably destroys data irrespective of that data's importance, in large degree because the company just doesn't have a solid plan in place? That's all AMD is alleging, that their system was inadequate to the task, not that Intel deliberately crippled their email system to lose emails they didn't want showing up during discovery. The fact that this isn't uncommon in email systems makes the argument more believable, not less.

      If they were alleging deliberate destruction of evidence, that would be a whole different ball of wax.

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      The enemies of Democracy are
  3. Data Retention part is True by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I work at Intel and the retention policy is VERY short on sent items and equally short for all the other mail folders in the inbox. I hear of people losing emails all the time because of this. Hell, I have lost a few sent emails myself. Also, from what I heard (from friends in IT) that we only keep a backup of 7 days of all the exchange server data only for disaster/worst case scenario reasons.

    1. Re:Data Retention part is True by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That sounds reasonably "advertent" to me...
      Almost like a policy of data loss.

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      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  4. don't be fooled by sharp-bang · · Score: 4, Informative

    The claim of poor retention is increasingly a stock claim made by plaintiff's lawyers. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure increasingly place a discovery burden on all organizations. Anything and everything electronically stored is subject to electronic discovery, and if you don't have a retention policy that deals with what is subject to discovery when litigation is "reasonably foreseeable", you can be sure the opposing attorneys will point that out, even if it is BS.

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    #!
  5. Pentium bug by Rastignac · · Score: 3, Funny

    The documents were not destroyed on purpose. They were destroyed by error due to the division bug of a Pentium 1 processor.
    Sorry, AMD.

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    -- Rastignac was here.
  6. Intel acknowledges losing docs by strike6 · · Score: 3, Informative

    This isn't an allegation. Intel has acknowledged losing documents. URL:http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/bus iness/16843055.htm

  7. Not all email by erbmjw · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's not all email from all Intel employees that must be retained

    1027 case-specific individuals at Intel were identified and from 2005 case initiation date Intel is supposed to have all of their email retained; of these 1027 case-specific persons AMD is allowed to stipulate 471 for court scrutiny of data.

    These employees, dubbed "custodians," are persons of interest in the legal proceedings.
  8. Re:Poor AMD - RTA by erbmjw · · Score: 4, Informative

    The court instructed Intel to retain all email for 1027 case-specific individuals from the data of case initiation ie 2005.

    This has nothing to do with leaving AMD in a not so great light; but it does have everything to do with Intel not properly following court orders - Intel even admitted they screwed up!