Intellectual Property Law

E-Discovery Irony

By Tim Feathers

You know that Alanis Morissette song, "Ironic," well it seems to me that it has tarnished an entire generation's understanding of irony:

And isn't it ironic... don't you think

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought... it figures

Of course, none of those things are particularly ironic, unless perhaps the bride and groom happened to be meteorologists and had chosen Death Valley as the location for their wedding to ensure sunshine. Instead, the song is simply about a series of bummers. So how do we teach the Morissette Generation about irony?

Enter Guidance Software, Inc. to the rescue. Guidance bills itself as the leading provider of E-Discovery services and software solutions to assist in ferretting out emails and electronic evidence in the litigation process. So where's the irony? You guessed it - Guidance has been accused of failing to produce smoking gun emails and electronic evidence in litigation against it filed by a former employee.  An arbitrator involved in the dispute went so far as to accuse Guidance of gross negligence and bad faith. See the story in the Washington Post here (subscription required) or at Salon here.

Image courtesy of Wendy

Full post as published by The TechKnowledgy Blog on February 18, 2009 (boomark / email).