Tony Mauro writing for the Legal Times reported on the oral argument before the US Supreme Court in a case of document destruction.
The law makes it a crime to "corruptly persuade" others to destroy documents to make them unavailable for an official proceeding. The government's interpretation of the law, advanced in the case Arthur Andersen v. United States, has corporate legal departments concerned that routine advice and standard policies about document retention will be criminalized.
Andersen's lawyer Maureen Mahoney, head of Latham & Watkins' appellate and constitutional practice, hammered the point that under long-standing Court precedent, the actual destruction of documents without knowledge of a pending proceeding is legal. But under the government's definition of "corruptly persuade," she said, telling someone else to destroy the same documents would be a crime.
Snip.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the government's interpretation was a "sweeping" policy that would "cause trouble for every company."
O'Connor too fretted about the impact on small businesses and on lawyers who advise companies. "How is a person supposed to know what to do? How is a lawyer supposed to know?" she asked.
Read the article
here.
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