nx_hold_lib.nx

nx_hold_lib.nx -- LEGAL HOLD / PRESERVATION (the EDRM LEFT SIDE) + the FRCP 37(e) sanction ladder. nx_ediscovery screens what goes OUT (production is an allow-list). This is the other half, and it is the half that ends cases: evidence destroyed before review ever happens. You cannot screen a document you already deleted. THE DUTY (Zubulake / FRCP 37(e)): the obligation to preserve attaches when litigation is REASONABLY ANTICIPATED -- not when a complaint is filed, not when counsel is retained. Anticipation is normally the EARLIER date, so the duty runs from the MINIMUM of the two triggers. Anchoring preservation to the filing date is the most common preservation error and it silently discards months of evidence. THE TOOTH THAT MATTERS MOST: issuing a hold notice is NOT preservation. Three things are separate and all three are required -- the NOTICE went out, every custodian ACKNOWLEDGED it, and automated DELETION was actually SUSPENDED on every system. A notice sent while the email retention policy keeps purging on schedule is a hold that exists only on paper. Systems conflate the notice with the suspension constantly, so they are counted independently and defensibility never rests on the notice. THE SAFE HARBOUR, ENCODED EXACTLY: FRCP 37(e) does NOT punish lost ESI as such. Sanctions require ALL of -- ESI was lost, REASONABLE STEPS were not taken, and it cannot be restored or replaced. If reasonable steps WERE taken the answer is no sanctions even though data is gone. Severe measures (adverse-inference, dismissal) require an additional finding of INTENT TO DEPRIVE; negligence, however gross, tops out at curative. Collapsing those tiers turns a discovery dispute into a lost case. STRUCTURE: a PURE DECISION CORE (rules, no I/O) plus REGISTRY ADAPTERS. The rules gate with zero writes so a storage stall cannot make them unverifiable (debt 1785519597), and each rule exists once. SCALE ENVELOPE (declared): the matter record is ONE packed canonical record; one record per custodian. DRY: composes nx_matter_lib. license_tier: ORIGINAL LIB.