Presented by Norman Houghton
Rulings in case law can have impacts on document retention schedules. Recent developments in asbestos litigation caused the QR Corporation to re-assess its disposal practices for certain records. As a past user of asbestos products the Corporation is subject to present compensation claims from injured workers. A legal determination from 2004 allows for compensation payments to be part recovered from suppliers of asbestos product. However, given the incubation period for the disease of up to 40 years, furnishing proof of purchase from the 1940s to the 1970s can be an insurmountable problem. The Corporation responded by engaging the services of an archivist/historian to hunt down firm and direct evidence of purchases. Success was achieved by looking at alternative and unlikely business transactions that substituted for the long gone primary financial records dealing with purchases and product end uses.