About 6 months ago, during about a 1 week period, a number of customers called into the Bricker Beverages (BB) 1-800 number and sent in contacts through BBs website and the companys social media accounts (such as Facebook, Twitter) complaining of becoming ill after drinking BBs beverages. Dana Bricker Freewheel, the General Counsel, asked you to do an internal investigation and you determined that the complaints all had similar concerns (severe stomach issues, in cases requiring hospitalization for dehydration) and were spread throughout all beverage lines. Approximately 90% of all cases occurred in the Southeast region (AL, FL, GA, MS, NC, SC, TN).
Last month, BB received a complaint from the law firm Ambul, Ans, & Chase indicating that a class action against BB had been filed in federal court in Mississippi. The plaintiffs lawyer demanded by letter that BB preserve and produce all documents relevant to the manufacture, distribution, marketing and testing of all beverages sold by BB, including but not limited to all customer complaints, testing results, and all email referring to any changes in beverage composition or customer complaints. There are 3,000 BB employees. The headquarters office in Midtown Manhattan, corporate campus in Phoenix, AZ, and 5 regional manufacturing and distribution centers are connected by a Wide Area Network (WAN). BB performs nightly backups of all network drives and email servers that ride on this WAN; these backups are rotated weekly. The 3 specialty manufacturing centers operate independent networks. All email older than 90 days is purged from the WAN. In addition, storage rooms in each specialty manufacturing center hold in aggregate approximately 500 tapes of legacy production systems, presumably generated by prior owners of the specialty manufacturing centers. The specialty manufacturing centers do not have an email management program. Further, it has become apparent through interviews of various employees that many in the company have used Gmail and Dropbox to share information with one another.
Assignment
For this assignment you are to consider the possible employees, data sources and types of data that may be implicated in the hypothetical litigation (“Situation”) described above. Download and save the Excel spreadsheet attached below and:
In TAB A of the attached spreadsheet, list at least 7 types of employees by job title or role (e.g., “Chief Operating Officer”) who will need to be interviewed about any data they may have created and stored that could relate to this litigation. Note in a few words why you chose this person.
In TAB B, create a list of at least 12 data sources/locations (e.g., work email, Sharepoint database) that you will ask them about in your effort to find all relevant information.
Also in TAB B, list types of data that may be of interest and relevant to this situation (e.g., contracts).
Find the spreadsheet attached.
Find the original Bricker hypothetical, which describes the company, attached.
Please follow assignment rubric criteria:
Data sources/locations:
Identify at least 12 data sources/locations where employees might have created or stored data.
Types of information:
Identify at least 6 types of information that could be relevant to the case and should be preserved.
People:
Identify at least 7 types of employees who need to be interviewed to learn where they may have created or stored relevant information