Section 220 of the Delaware General Corporation Law permits a stockholder to inspect the books and records of a corporation, provided that the demand for inspection meets certain form and manner requirements, and the inspection is sought for a proper purpose—e.g., one reasonably related to the interests of stockholders. Plaintiff stockholders bear the burden of proving that each category of documents sought is essential to accomplish the stockholders’ purpose for the inspection. Section 220 inspections of books and records are not intended to produce a comprehensive set of documents that would likely be produced under discovery rules in a plenary action. Rather, the goal in a 220 action is to provide stockholders with a discrete set of documents sufficient or necessary to accomplish their purpose.

In most cases, if a company adheres to traditional corporate record-keeping practices to document corporate actions in board minutes, resolutions, written consents or official letters, production of these type of paper documents will likely be sufficient to accomplish the stockholders’ purpose without having to produce emails or other electronically-stored information. But if the traditional, nonelectronic documents are insufficient or nonexistent, emails may be the only responsive documents available to accomplish the stockholders’ purpose, and thus, such emails are by definition necessary, and must be produced.