On December 9th, the Ohio Supreme Court ordered the Seneca County Board of Commissioners to pay for forensic recovery of its deleted e-mails. The case stemmed from a records request from the Toledo Blade for e-mails concerning the Board’s decision to demolish the county courthouse. The Board could not produce the e-mails because the e-mails were deleted, and the Blade filed a writ of mandamus to compel the Board to forensically restore the e-mail. The court granted the writ, finding that the Board deleted e-mail in violation of its own retention policy. The Blade produced sufficient evidence to show that the e-mails still existed on the Board’s computers even though they were deleted, and that the e-mails had significant value to the litigation. The court considered shifting the cost of the forensic analysis to the Blade, but decided against it because the requesters of information under the Ohio statute are not required to pay for the costs of their requests. The story may be found at http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=302497e7-9406-4c72-b18b-4278dc846c36