Guidance Software Inc. is a technology firm that specializes in helping companies dig up old emails and other electronic documents that may be evidence in a lawsuit.

Well it turns out one of Guidance's former employees thought her dismissal was fishy.  Cassondra Todd felt it had something to do with the fact she is a woman. She also thought that the company's chairmen pressured her manager to give her a bad review; so she requested an investigation.

Todd hoped that whatever documents were found would show evidence of discrimination.  No evidence surfaced.  This shocked her.

She then hired an attorney and filed a wrongful-termination claim.  Both sides were required to present e-documents for evidence.  The results of Guidance's e-discovery seemed small to her; but Todd couldn't prove that Guidance was holding back. 

That was until Todd's first manager at Guidance and head of a rival company printed and saved some documents from the time of Todd's first bad performance review.

Considering that this is what Guidance specialized in, the judge presiding the case reacted harshly.  Awarding Todd with legal fees, and two years of her annual salary.  However other experts not involved with the case say Guidance was not legally required to search its backup tapes at first, given the expense of reading them.

This raises an interesting point I thought.  The article states the law differentiates between "reasonably accessible" files and ones that are too expensive to tackle at least in initial e-discovery.  More and more documents are becoming electronic now.  Should the law be as ambiguous as it is?  This surprised me that the law was as vague as it seems to be.