Cost-Effective Subpoena Compliance
Cost-Effective Subpoena Compliance: Fulfilling Subpoenas Without Violating Applicable Privacy Laws
Complying with a wide variety of incoming subpoenas can be a burdensome task for corporate legal departments with increasingly limited money, time, and staff resources. Juggling and tracking multiple subpoenas including gathering voluminous amounts of documents and meeting court-imposed deadlines requires seamless coordination between individuals and across departments. Late or incomplete compliance with subpoenas can result in court-imposed penalties and adverse litigation outcomes against the company and vital stakeholders, especially if fulfillment is done in violation of certain financial, electronic communication, and medical information privacy laws.
Regardless of the nature of your business, your company will have to respond to any litigation subpoenas that it receives. If you fail to comply, courts may hold your company in contempt and possibly impose fines or penalties such as court costs, attorney’s fees, or sanctions. As an extreme case of noncompliance, two nonparties were held in contempt of court for their willful failure to comply with court-issued subpoenas and orders and assessed $216,169 for plaintiff’s attorney’s fees.
Besides complying with litigation subpoenas, companies in different industries may also need to comply with financial, electronic communications, or medical privacy laws. For example, telecommunication and internet service providers must comply with the Stored Wire and Electronic Communications Act (SWECA) under which persons aggrieved by the wrongful disclosures of electronic communications are afforded civil remedies including injunctive relief, actual damages, reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, and punitive damages if disclosures are willful or intentional. Similarly, financial institutions also face potential liability for not adhering to the stringent customer privacy protections embodied in the Right to Financial Privacy Act (FPA). For disclosing customer financial information in violation of FPA, financial institutions will be liable for actual damages, attorney’s fees and costs, and punitive damages if disclosure was intentional or willful. Additionally, health care providers and health plan administrators must be careful not to disclose protected personal medical information when responding to subpoenas except as permitted under the Health Insurance and Portability Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
Regardless of the condition of your current compliance program, the Corporation Service Company (CSC) can help you increase the efficiency and transparency of your subpoena fulfillment process. We eliminate the wasteful double-handling of subpoenas by receiving and scanning them on your behalf as your registered agent and seamlessly integrating them into your existing processing system. Our highly trained associates can capture key compliance information from subpoenas, including case number; the nature of the subpoena—document production, deposition attendance, or trial attendance; time, date, and location instructions; and the name(s) of subpoenaed persons. Unlike other software programs that are expensive to install and require annual upgrades, our online tools will not require substantial capital investments or waste your valuable IT resources.
To improve collaboration between individuals and departments, our matter managment technology allows users to delegate tasks, track deadlines, upload documents, and record all responses made to individual subpoenas. By allowing third-party users to download documents from the main workroom, you can reduce your staffing and paper costs while keeping confidential information secure in separate user-restricted workrooms. Documents can be stored online indefinitely, or deleted in accordance with user-specified intervals. Our secure, online portal will increase the visibility of the entire process allowing your legal team to minimize your exposure while enabling your subpoena compliance personnel to work together in a cost-effective manner. Most importantly, we can help reduce your exposure and save you time and money by helping you develop protocols for complying with the subpoenas commonly received by financial institutions, telecommunication firms, or healthcare service and insurance organizations.
To learn more about CSC, visit the company website at www.cscglobal.com. To request a complimentary white paper on complying subpoenas and applicable privacy laws or learn more about our subpoena management service, please call 800-927-9801, ext 3678, or email us.
