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Recent ShuffieldLowman News
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Suzanne Meehle was invited to speak on the topic "Legal Liability and Data Retention" to KForce Professional Staffing in Ybor City. |
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Jennifer Junker presented on the topic, "Fiduciary Relationships" and ERISA to a group of accountants. |
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Tae Shin and Jason Davis spoke on the topic, "Mergers & Acquisitions" at the Florida Federal Tax Seminar sponsored by the Florida Institute of CPAs (FICPA) |
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Bill Lowman gave a presentation on, "An Overview of Estate Planning", to a group of bankers. |
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Greg Meier attended The Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning. This is the nation's leading conference for estate planning professionals. It is designed for experienced attorneys, trust officers, accountants, insurance advisors, and wealth management professionals who are familiar with the principles of estate planning. |
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ShuffieldLowman is sponsoring the Central Florida Association for Women Lawyers Professional Women's Exchange in February at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater. Proceeds will benefit A Place for Children located in the Orange County Courthouse which provides supervision for children while their parents privately handle court matters sheilding the children from witnessing difficult and hurtful situations. |
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ATTENTION!
Mandatory Electronic Annual Report Filing for Entities
The State of Florida has passed new rules for filing your Annual Report for your corporation, partnership or LLC. All Annual Reports must be entered and submitted electronically online on or before May 1, 2009, to avoid late fees and possible dissolution. You can no longer download a pre-printed form and mail it in. You must go to www.sunbiz.org to file your report, and you are now required to provide an email address. All information must be current as of the date of filing the Annual Report.
Payments can be made by credit card, debit card, or by check or money order. All payment options will be listed after you complete and submit your Annual Report online.
If you would like us to handle your filing or need any assistance, please give us a call. |
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Required Minimum Distributions Suspended for 2009
Just before leaving office, President Bush signed a law suspending all mandatory withdrawals for 2009 from individual retirement accounts, 401(k)s, 403(b) plans, profit sharing plans and certain other qualified retirement plans. Note that there is no requirement to make up these distributions in a later year. The same rules apply to heirs and beneficiaries of IRAs and Retirement Plans, such that heirs and beneficiaries are not required to make their mandatory withdrawals for 2009.
If you have any questions on these new rules, please feel free to contact us. |
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Technology drives business. Computers, the Internet, e-mail, cell phones, voicemail, fax machines, and blackberries all help you run your business more efficiently and easily.
In business litigation, the evidence is no longer in the filing cabinet. Electronically stored information (or “ESI”), such as e-mail or word processing documents, generally must be produced electronically in litigation discovery. Upon notice of any pending litigation, no potentially relevant ESI may be destroyed, including its metadata.
Just as you can’t wait until the eye of the storm is overhead to prepare for a hurricane, you can’t wait until litigation is pending to deal with e-discovery. Under e-discovery rules which went into effect in December 2006, your business must be prepared at any time to furnish ESI that could be relevant in potential or ongoing litigation.
The time for responding to e-discovery requests is very short, and courts impose sanctions on businesses that fail to timely disclose or produce requested ESI. The most severe sanctions are imposed on businesses that intentionally or inadvertently destroy relevant ESI.
But keeping ESI too long is expensive. It requires additional disk space on servers and personal computers. Keeping documents longer than needed increases the risk that evidence against you will be discovered. Moreover, the more ESI there is to review, the higher the cost of litigation.
The good news is that the rules provide a “safe harbor” provision. Under the safe harbor, courts cannot impose sanctions on a business that fails to provide ESI that was lost or destroyed as a result of the routine, good-faith operation of its electronic information systems. Moreover, courts have held that companies following a written Document Retention Policy shows evidence of such a routine, good faith operation of its electronic information system.
While you should have a Document Retention Policy, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. How long you need to preserve ESI will be dictated by your business purposes, risk of civil liability, interaction with government, industry regulations and technological limitations.
A Document Retention Policy that is enforced is necessary to help limit your liability and prevent sanctions. Businesses are finding necessity of being in control of the data that is available in response to a discovery request and are better prepared to meet discovery deadlines with this control. An attorney experienced in E-Discovery can help you draft a Document Retention Policy that is tailored to your needs. Please let us know if we can utilize our experience to help you draft a Policy for your company.
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Speaking the Language of E-Discovery
· "Data" refers to any electronically-stored information ("ESI".)
· "Documents" refers to any electronic or paper documentation, including both paper documents and electronic files, such as word processing documents, e-mail, spreadsheets, etc. They are also called "records."
· "Metadata" refers to "data about the data." Metadata is data that travels with each and every electronic file and contains a multitude of information about the file, including who created the file, the data and time it was created, when it was last modified, when and how it was stored, if it has been copied, if it has been printed, how it was formatted, the file size, and potentially thousands of other pieces of information about the file. Metadata is usually discoverable if it can be shown to be relevant to litigation.
· "Data retention architecture" refers to the computers and networks where data is stored.
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