Conclusion from Law.com article: Pension Committee – One Year Later

If the trend exemplified by Victor Stanley II and Rimkus is any indication, Pension Committee‘s bright-line rule that failing to issue a written legal hold constitutes per se gross negligence may not be widely accepted by other judges. To the contrary, the consensus view appears to be moving away from per se rules governing the conduct of e-discovery in favor of case-by-case analysis.

It should, nonetheless, be stressed that the issuance of a written legal hold is good practice and in many cases the failure to do so may constitute negligence or even gross negligence. Litigants should not interpret judicial embrace of the concepts of reasonableness and proportionality as a signal that doing less to preserve documents is now acceptable business practice.

The entire article can be seen here: