The School Board recognizes its responsibility, in certain circumstances, to maintain information created, maintained or otherwise stored by the School Corporation outside the "records retention schedule". In such situations, a litigation hold procedure will be utilized to identify and preserve information relevant to a specific matter. All paper documents and electronically stored information ("ESI") subject to a litigation hold shall be handled pursuant to the requirements in AG 8315. All information falling within a litigation hold, which is under the control of the Corporation, must be preserved in a readily accessible form and cannot be disposed of under the records retention and disposal procedures. Failure to comply with a litigation hold notice may result in disciplinary action, up to and including possible termination.

"Documents" includes, but is not limited to, writings, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs, blueprints, sound recordings, images and other data or data compilations stored in any medium from which information can be obtained or translated if necessary.

"ESI" includes, but is not limited to, writings, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs, blueprints, sound recordings, images and other data or data compilations stored in any electronic media from which information can be obtained or translated if necessary. It includes, but is not limited to, e-mails, e-mail attachments, instant messages, word processing files, spreadsheets, pictures, application program and data files, databases, data files, metadata, system files, electronic calendar appointments, scheduling program files, TIFF files, PDF files, MPG files, JPG files, GIF files, network share files, internal websites, external websites, newsgroups, directories, security and access information, legacy data, audio recordings, voice mails, phone logs, faxes, internet histories, caches, cookies or logs of activity on computer systems that may have been used to process or store electronic data.

"Electronic media" includes, but is not limited to, hard drives (including portable hard disk drives "HDD's"), floppy drives, disaster recovery media, and storage media (including DVD's, CD's, floppy discs, Zip discs/drives, Jazz discs/drives, USB memory drives, jump disc/drives, flash discs/drives, keychain discs/drives, thumb discs/drives, smart cards, micro-film, backup tapes, cassette tapes, cartridges, etc.), accessed, used and/or stored on/in/through the following locations: networks and servers; laptop and desktop work computers; home and personal computers; other computer systems; backup computers or servers; archives; wireless communication device as defined in Bylaw 0100; pagers; firewalls; audit trails and logs, printers; copiers; scanners; digital cameras; photographic devices; and video cameras and devices. Electronic media shall also include any item containing or maintaining ESI that is obtained by the Corporation for Board member or employee usage or that an employee uses for such purpose (even if privately owned by the Board member or employee) from the date this policy is adopted into the future.

A "litigation hold" shall remain in place until removed by the Board. A "litigation hold" may be removed when the litigation or administrative agency matter has been resolved or can no longer be initiated. Any information maintained under this policy shall fall back under the records retention schedule once the "litigation hold" is removed.

The Superintendent shall develop administrative guidelines outlining the procedures to be followed by Board members and employees when initiating and implementing a "litigation hold". This policy and its related administrative guidelines shall be posted and distributed in the manner described in AG 8315.

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 34, 37(f)
Indiana Rules of Trial Procedure 34