Judge Queries News Corporation Subsidiary's Email Deletion Policy

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A judge has challenged the fairness of the policy of a News Corporation subsidiary under which all e-mails are deleted after only three days, with only those considered important printed out and included in hard copy files. Justice Ronald Sackville told News Limited's barrister, Noel Hutley, that the company should "Keep them. Or don't engage in a systematic process of removal of them so that in a case like this the end result is that ... I simply don't know what the contemporaneous communications were within News." In its closing submission News Ltd pointed out that the deletion of e-mails by its in-house lawyer was consistent with the system employed by News's head office in New York. Sackville is hearing a case into allegations that News Limited and others sought to undermine the viability of a pay TV company operated by the Seven Network.