December 6, 2007

Bredesen Administration Fights Court Order on Releasing Computer Records

The Bredesen administration continues to fight a judge's order that it turn over "forensic copies" of hard drives, file servers and storage media where documents, e-mails, databases and other information relating to a huge lawsuit alleging TennCare is failing to provide adequate healthcare to children.

The order was issued weeks ago because of the administration's "repeated failures to ensure the preservation of existing electronically stored information," according to U.S. District Judge William Haynes. Judge Haynes says the administration failed to implement an effective "litigation hold," resulting in "the routine destruction of responsive electronic and hard copy documents by both state agencies and their contractors."

Shorter version: Either intentionally or through reckless incompetence the Bredesen administration let documents get destroyed, and now doesn't want to comply with a high-tech computer forensics search that could recover them.