When does “delete” really mean “delete”? Almost never, according to experts on document retrieval.
The case of destroyed documents – like those Enron materials sent into the void by Arthur Andersen employees – sounds like a debacle. But it turns out that a deleted document does not necessarily mean a missing document. By now, many attorneys know that pressing the delete button in Outlook does not mean an e-mail is gone forever. When a document or memo is deleted, it can often be recovered from a computer’s hard drive or possibly backup tapes.
